The intense rains caused landslides, terraces and walls in the Douro Demarcated Region to collapse, affecting paths and roads, with losses that have not yet been accounted for, but which also affect wine tourism and winegrowers’ businesses.
With a farm in Mesão Frio, district of Vila Real, Justina Teixeira pointed to losses of “large thousands of euros” resulting from the various walls and landings that fell in different areas” of the property, then adding “a whole limitation” on the business, both in wine tourism activities and in the work that should be carried out, at this time of year.
Because of the bad weather, pruning of the vines is at a standstill, work in the winery is being affected, such as traffic jams, and there are wines to be shipped, but “no truck can come and load to the farm right now” because the most direct route to your farm is cut off due to the risk of a landslide.
Justina Teixeira spoke of an “immense daily loss” and exemplified it with the wine tourism activity, such as lunches and dinners, which were cancelled, visits and tests that cannot be done, such as wine jams because the truck cannot transport bottles, and he also said that employees cannot use the road, because it is only accessible to residents.
The chambers are helping farmers fill out forms to report losses to the Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR-N) and, among testimonies shared by Mesão Frio city hall, is that of Hugo Pinto, owner of a farm where “nine walls” would have fallen.
Quoted in a statement, this winegrower exemplified that replacing “just one of the walls, measuring 35 meters, costs around 18 thousand euros, in terms of labor”.
In other statements, the couple José Ferreira and Lurdes Lopes said that the “vineyard’s support wall, around 40 meters long, completely collapsed and that they still fear further damage.
Manuel Pereira recorded the fall of a retaining wall in the vineyard, compromising the stability of one of its plots, remembering that the losses amount to around 2,500 euros.
Rui Soares, winegrower and president of the Association of Professional Winegrowers of the Douro (Prodouro), urged winegrowers to report their losses on the CCDR-N platform, and then be able to make an update.
“It is not an application for anything, but it is essential so that official entities understand the extent of the damage and can then open support lines”, he stressed
And, for Rui Soares, this “support is fundamental”.
“The sector is very fragile. Farmers have been experiencing difficult harvests and, in terms of production, there are not enough means to face the damage that the bad weather has caused”, he stressed.
The official said most farmers do not have insurance. “They have, at most, crop insurance, but they don’t cover this type of loss,” he highlighted.
In his specific case, in the vineyard he owns in Lamego, district of Viseu, he had a landslide that caused “around 2,000 square meters of soil to disappear”in addition to dragged vines and fallen walls, with “significant damage” to the agricultural exploration.
“This year has been catastrophic. The amount of water was very large”, said Rui Coelho, with a vineyard also in Lamego, which points to “massive damage to rebuild” in fallen walls and uprooted vines.
For now, with the land soaked, it is still difficult to carry out an exhaustive survey, but, “roughly”, the winegrower points to “55 thousand euros” to reestablish “more or less normality”.
“If the winegrower’s dismay was already great, with these problems in the grape value chain, with catastrophes like these, it is very encouraging to sell, to abandon”, he stated, remembering that there are already weeks followed by intense rain that have interrupted work in the vineyard, such as pruning.
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