21 January 2016

​Rain... the keystone

The most important factor in our agriculture is the rain. Maybe other our followers who come from Germany, France, the USA, United Kingdom,... don't think so, but in Spain and specially in our area (central-south Iberian Peninsula) the most important factor is the rain since we live in an arid ground. Many times, the tractor, tools, fertilizer, sowing method,... that we use aren’t decisive... the results depend on the amount of rain fallen during the whole year and more particularly in spring. We remember our grandfathers and more recently our father looking the sky every day to know if it will rain... Unfortunately nowadays, we are in the same situation, or even worse, because of the climate change.

According to the old people of our village memories, several years ago the rainfall was larger than nowadays... the climate change is a fact and farmers are seriously suffering it. As you can see in our chart, we show you the amount of rain in our village (La Alberca de Záncara - Cuenca) in 2015. The total in 2015 was 320mm (liters/s.q.m.) when this total was over double 30 years ago.


Rain(mm)
Date

Rain(mm)
Date
6
17/01/2015

2
29/05/2015
8
19/01/2015

5
10/06/2015
2
20/01/2015

16
11/06/2015
31
31/01/2015

5
22/08/2015
17
02/02/2015

15
07/09/2015
5
03/02/2015

5
17/09/2015
5
12/02/2015

2
27/09/2015
12
15/02/2015

4
06/10/2015
2
17/02/2015

2
11/10/2015
3
21/02/2015

3
12/10/2015
9
18/03/2015

4
14/10/2015
9
20/03/2015

4
17/10/2015
15
23/03/2015

15
18/10/2015
17
24/03/2015

10
20/10/2015
8
09/04/2015

4
26/10/2015
4
11/04/2015

1
27/10/2015
7
15/04/2015

25
02/11/2015
3
16/04/2015

8
03/11/2015
15
26/04/2015

2
29/12/2015
5
19/05/2015

5
31/12/2915


It isn't necessary a lot of rain to have a great crop of cereal but the rain is necessary at very specific times of the year. For example, our crops need rain in April and May... it is fundamental. Also the rain is important after sowing (in December) and when we are fertilizing (February or March). In our aggregate graph you can see April and May were too much dry so our crop was catastrophic :(

We also performed the "cabañuelas" method. This forecast system is based on evaluating the meteorology of the first 24 days (morning hours) of August of the previous year... you have more information about that from here. As you can see in our pictures, the system is quite accurate and it can be used to do some planning in your farm... Regrettably, you have to remember cabañuelas isn't 100% accurate.

Versión en español.


Rain in 2015
Rain in 2015
Rain in 2015

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