Due to climate change, the risk of drought is increasing concern in France. Farmers and individuals are forced to adapt, while irrigation is still not a very developed option in France.

"The farmer knows that he has to live with the climate. Except that there, it's been three years in a row ... It worries us a lot." In Gommersdorf, in the Haut-Rhin, milk producer Denis Nass fears a difficult tomorrow due to the lack of precipitation. Concerns justified if we believe the map published Thursday by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, which places the Haut-Rhin among the departments at "very likely risk" of drought for this summer.

Farmers adapt ...

Farmers in the field have no choice but to adapt at the moment. Denis Nass thus awaits the help of the cereal farmers of the Alsace plain so that after their wheat, they produce fodder plants intended for breeders.

There would be another solution. "When the climate becomes too variable, the only way to do it would be to irrigate much more", tempers Vazken Andréassian, director of the hydrology research unit at Inrae (National Food Research Institute, the agriculture and the environment) Friday on Europe 1.

But this option is "relatively underdeveloped in France" and "all cultivated land is not irrigable", because of the absence of "reservoir dams" and "aquifers", notes the researcher.

... individuals too

Farmers are not the only ones to face. In Masevaux, some 20 km north of Gommersdorf, work is underway to guarantee access to water for the inhabitants of this village used to summer round trips from drinking water tankers. For Florent Ducottet, in charge of water for the municipality, drought "is a very concrete threat", in particular because of "water cuts".

In the fall, if all goes well, this threat should however disappear for the 100 inhabitants of a hamlet of the village thanks to the installation of two kilometers of pipes connected to the river at the bottom of the valley. Here, now, we no longer rely on mountain springs.

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Rivers and groundwater benefited from "a good winter"

Good news, however. For Vazken Andréassian, the state of the rivers and groundwater is not worrying, thanks to "a good winter with a good recharge". "Even upstream of Paris, the large reservoir dams that will supply the Seine this summer are at least 90% full, and they will be full by the filling season at the end of June."