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Rains to Hit Harvest in North |
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By Sangita Basu
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Wednesday, 20 August 2008 |
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 With rising food prices, it was last thing consumers needed but August's heavy rains are likely to affect crop-yields, particularly in northern Finland which has been battered worse than the rest of the country.
The wet weather, which has blighted northern Finland for much of August, has led to increase in mould and other plant parasites. The ProAgria rural advisory centre has said that unless there is a warm, dry spell soon then havests are bound to be damaged.
Cereal and grain have simply got too wet in all areas of the country and in northern Finland some fields are so badly waterlogged that they cannot support heavy farming machinery.
There has even been minor local flooding in the more built up areas of southern Finland with Finland's largest lake, Saimaa, being 30 centimetres above its average level for the time of year. Rain is expected to continue in many areas this week.
The Finnish summer tradition of swimming in the lake has also been impacted. Though many lake are deeper the weather has left them far colder than they usually are at the time of year. In Lapland, some lakes are reportedly around 15 degrees cooler than normal.
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