Severe Drought Hits Southeast Europe

After the harshest winter in decades, the Balkans in the southeast of Europe is now facing the worst drought in years. Sadly, it will only serve to compound the global effects of America’s current drought.

Nikola Radic, a Serbian farmer, said, “There is no salvation here.” Radic says he “lost hope for salvation even a month ago, and now it’s even worse.”

In some places in Bosnia, the drought is the worst in 40 years.

Record-setting summer temperatures have devastated food and electricity production in the region, which is already badly hit by the global economic crisis.

In Bosnia, the heat has destroyed almost 70 percent of vegetable and corn production, with potato and corn among the worst-affected crops. Most farmers are cutting down their corn crops for livestock feed, but the quality is so poor that most of the parched crop cannot even be used for that.

Crops in Bosnia’s Semberija region are brown and brittle, and some 27,000 acres have been lost in this area alone.

Officials estimate that the drought in Bosnia-Herzegovina will cost the equivalent of half a billion euros.

Farmers are worried that they will not have adequate funds next year to buy seed corn and other investments. One farmer, who is expecting yields of less than a third of the 2011 crop, said that if the drought persists for another year, he will no longer be able to farm.

Farmers are asking for state help, but, with prolonged economic and political crisis placing a strain on national finances, none is coming.

Ljubisav Tomic, a farmer in Bosnia, sayid “This is lost. Only God can help us, only heavens can save us.”

Expect already-high food prices to continue to rise as grain supplies become increasingly depleted.

For a more in-depth look at this and other calamities facing our world today, download our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters.