National farmers organisation CNA has urged the Portuguese government to adopt “emergency plans” to help the sector cope with the current severe drought.

CNA leader João Dinis issued the alert at the weekend, telling Lusa that the lack of rain since 2011 – with some parts of the mainland suffering prolonged “extreme drought” – called for some urgent action from Lisbon.

“We’re going to face a break in national agricultural production, and farmers, who already suffered big losses last year, will be adding losses to losses until unsupportable levels”, Dinis said.

“The government must again draft emergency plans for this situation of extreme drought”, he added.

(Photograph: Glyn Baker)