August 23, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-us-Sani 24, 1424

PARIS, Aug 22: The French government, struggling to cope with the aftermath of a heatwave that may have killed 10,000 people, was on Friday sent reeling again when Agriculture Minister Herve Gaymard said a drought exacerbated by the hot spell had caused losses of up to four billion euros.

Speaking on Europe 1 radio, Mr Gaymard said he did not have exact figures for the loss, but estimated: “I’d say several billion euros... between one and four billion (between 1.1 billion and 4.4 billion dollars).”

The blow to Europe’s biggest agricultural producer was severe, and comes as France faces a budgetary squeeze brought on by a contracting economy in the second quarter of this year.

Nevertheless, Mr Gaymard promised that French farmers would receive state financial help — though probably not to the level requested.

“Everyone knows the costs for farmers will be high, and that national solidarity should come into play,” he said.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was to chair a meeting this week of the major agricultural organizations, many of which were demanding the government make overdue payments into a disaster fund.

The head of one of the organizations, Jean-Michel Lemetayer of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions, told the La Tribune newspaper he agreed with the four-billion-euro figure and said the government also had to provide free loans and tax suspensions for his members.

“What’s at stake is the survival of thousands of farmers in 2004,” he said.

Although the drought was in place before the killer heatwave that roasted France in the first half of this month, the persistent temperatures around 40-degree-Celsius greatly worsened the situation for farmers.

Crops wilted, millions of poultry died and livestock farmers had to use forage intended for winter to feed their animals.

In the central Correze region of France, trains brought in 400 tons of straw from Normandy for farmers desperate at the pitiful state of their herds.

“We have a high number of deaths among the cows, and milk production and the weight of the animals has dropped,” a local farmers’ union leader, Tony Cornelissen, said.

The emergency delivery was barely sufficient, but provided “breathing space”, he said, adding that he had to sell several head to buy the forage.

For French consumers, the financial fallout of the drought was already being felt, with prices for fruit and vegetables soaring in recent weeks.

Wine, too, was expected to become more expensive, though many makers were predicting a vintage of exceptional quality because, even though the grapes were producing less juice for pressing, the taste was more intense.

For the government, though, the double whammy of deaths related to the heatwave and the losses in the agricultural sector have pushed it up against the constraints of the euro zone, and the farmers may find themselves a secondary priority.

President Jacques Chirac on Thursday promised more state help for France’s elderly and fixes to the health system after it became clear that they formed the overwhelming bulk of the fatalities from the heatwave, which his government admitted had probably topped 10,000.

But, on top of tax cuts already being implemented and the economic contraction, the extra spending is again pushing the country over the three-percent-of-GDP deficit ceiling imposed under euro-zone rules.

Mr Gaymard admitted the farmers’ demand for tax breaks may not be “technically possible, because of the constraints from Brussels”.

French Riviera: Some 900 firefighters were on Friday battling brush fires in hills above France’s Mediterranean coast, in a region already ravaged by massive blazes last month.

Three fires broke out almost simultaneously late on Thursday in the Maures hills, between the towns of La Garde-Freinet and Vibaudan, in uplands northwest of the resort town of Saint-Tropez, rescue services said.

They said two of the blazes had since merged into a single one, and other smaller fires had also broken out in the Maures region.

Firefighters were using two giant Russian water-dropping helicopters, and planes that spray retardant onto regions around the flames.

Some 25,000 hectares of land in the region were blackened by the fires last month, which came amid extreme hot weather across much of southern Europe.

French officials believe that many of the recent fires have been started deliberately. —AFP