PARIS (AP)
Heavy rain in France has been delaying spring planting on farms
already hit hard by mad cow disease and the foot-and-mouth outbreak,
officials said Monday.
After autumn's
light yields, farmers are now being forced to postpone planting
of green peas, beets, potatoes and other crops, said Luc Guyau,
president of the national farmer's association, FNSEA.
The beet crop,
one of the most important in the flooded regions of the Somme
and Picardy in northern France, has been hit especially hard.
While planting normally takes place in March and April, in the
Somme only 5 percent of the normal acreage has been sown.
Northern France
had rain 20 to 26 days in April, weather officials say, and one
town saw nearly three times as much rain as normal.
Only 65 to
70 percent of the normal acreage of grain fields have been sown,
and a shortage of straw has driven the price from $54 a ton to
$89 a ton, said Rene Louail, spokesman for the Confederation Paysanne.
Farmers are
having to travel as far as 250 miles to buy fodder, Guyau said.
It is yet
another blow for farmers, who have been unable to sell their livestock
because of the mad cow and foot-and-mouth crises.
Public concern
over mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, increased
last year after potentially infected meat had to be urgently withdrawn
from French supermarket shelves. The ailment, linked to the human
brain-wasting illness variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, has caused
three deaths in France and a huge drop in beef consumption.
France reported
two cases of foot-and-mouth in March, prompting other countries
to slap bans on importing French meat products. While the disease
is not dangerous for humans, foot-and-mouth disease spreads quickly
among cloven-hoofed animals like sheep, pigs and cows.
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