Previously, its trees located around the village of Dampleux, about twenty kilometers from Soissons, suffered from drought "once every ten years".

But over the past decade, "this is the fifth time that this orchard has been in water stress, with an increasingly uncertain harvest, and small fruits that I'm not even sure of harvesting", he notes. .

Dehydration has blocked the growth of its fruits, which "have barely grown for two months".

They may not even be fleshy enough to make compote - which would save some of the harvest, at a lower selling price.

This arborist "from father to son, over three generations", has never seen so little rain, around 70 millimeters since April, three times less than usual in the Aisne.

Faced with the worst drought that France has known since 1959, farmers from north to south of the country are prohibited from watering their crops, but the basin where Guillaume Seguin is located is not affected, so he irrigates the evening feet of its trees, drop by drop.

The long black pierced pipe, which winds only on some of its plots, brings about 50,000 liters of water per day.

A neighboring plot of 4.5 hectares with sandy, limestone soil could not be connected to the water network.

Added to this is the effect of heat: apples with still light colors have their skin browned by sunburn, despite the thin whitish film of calcium sprayed and supposed to protect them.

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The arborist, who records around a million euros in sales each year with his 27 hectares of fruit and 300 hectares of cereals, hopes for no more than a "half harvest" this year on this parched plot.

Flowering in peril

A few hundred meters further, where the pears grow, the leaves have also begun to blacken, curl up and litter the ground, the trees shedding them to limit evaporation.

When there is a lack of water or "it is very hot, the tree no longer feeds, it closes its stomata - which allow it to breathe and carry out photosynthesis", and stops feeding its fruits, explains Guillaume Sequin.

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The harvest will also bear the brunt of a year marked by a succession of climatic calamities, since in addition to the heat wave and the drought, frost has also hit the area.

Member of a cooperative with 12 other producers from Hauts-de-France, "there are not very many of us doing arboriculture", particularly sensitive to these episodes, he notes.

Arriving three weeks early, the early spring made his orchard vulnerable to cold snaps, and the flowers suffered the frosts of mid-April, which disrupted pollination.

He shows his deformed Conference pears, elongated "in the shape of bananas" and seedless due to poor pollination, which few early growers will want to buy.

Although well adapted to the normally temperate climate of the Aisne, Guillaume Seguin does not know if he will still plant this variety in ten years.

Pink Lady and Royal Gala apples, traditional to the South and better adapted to dry climates, could well replace them in the future.

The drought is also likely to degrade next year's flowering, as the trees take advantage of the summer to store up reserves for their future buds.

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To continue his activity, the farmer hopes to benefit from the future crop insurance system, a long-awaited reform scheduled for January 2023.

He also plans to dig "small boreholes that would supply a basin" in winter by drawing from groundwater, a water storage method popular with farmers but much criticized by environmental defense associations.

© 2022 AFP