The Plant Defense Association Tierras de Ponente has launched the 27th hail monitoring and study campaign in the Pla de Lleida, a mechanism that will be active until October 15 to analyze hail episodes that increasingly worry the agricultural sector due to their impact on crops.
The entity warns that climate change is favoring hailstorms with larger stones, an evolution that increases the risk of damage in agricultural exploitations of the Lleida regions. The objective of the campaign is to measure with more precision how these episodes behave and what effects they have on the ground.
A network spread across 80 municipalities
For this campaign, 172 hail gauges have been installed in the Pla de Lleida, devices that allow measuring the size of the hail, its density and also the impact of each hailstorm. The monitoring network is distributed in 80 municipalities of five counties.
- Segrià
- Pla d'Urgell
- Noguera
- Urgell
- Garrigues
This deployment allows to collect data on the real scope of each storm in one of the most sensitive agricultural areas to this type of phenomena. The campaign is also supported by the collaboration of local observers, who complete the information collected on the ground and help to extend the monitoring in each episode.
Concern about the impact on the countryside
The ADV Tierras de Ponente maintains that the evolution of hailstorms forces to reinforce both vigilance and protection measures. In this context, the association has requested from the Department of Agriculture aid to assume the cost of anti-stone nets, an investment that the sector considers necessary given the increase in severe episodes.
With this new monitoring, the entity seeks to have more data until mid-October to evaluate the intensity of the hailstorms and their impact on crops in Ponent, in a scenario marked by more aggressive storms and by the need to adapt agricultural protection to this new reality.