This story was produced and originally published by The Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
States of emergency have been declared in Latvia and Lithuania, while the sun continues to bake Swedish fields that have received only 12% of their normal rainfall.
The abnormally hot temperatures – which have topped 30C in the Arctic Circle – are in line with climate change trends, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
And as about 50 wildfires rage across Sweden, no respite from the heatwave is yet in sight.
“Most of south-west Sweden hasn’t had rain since the first days of May.
A very early harvest has started but yields seem to be the lowest for 25 years – 50% lower, or more in some cases – and it is causing severe losses.” If no rain comes soon, Nilsson’s association estimates agricultural losses of up to 8bn Swedish kronor (£700m) this year and widespread bankruptcies.
The drought would personally cost him around 500,000 kronor (£43,000), Nilsson said, adding that, like most farmers, he is now operating at a loss.
The picture is little different in the Netherlands, where Iris Bouwers, a 25-year-old farmer, said the parched summer had been a “catastrophe” for her farm.
“Older families around me are comparing this to 1976,” she said.
“Bankruptcies would be hard,” he said, “but the economic loss farmers are suffering is often just as bad because they are hidden bankruptcies that have been prevented by wasting family capital on a farm.” Thomas Duffy, an Irish dairy farmer from County Cavan, said the drought “won’t break us, but our feeding costs are 50 percent higher than last year and all the money we’d normally be putting into improving conditions for the cows and infrastructure is now going to silages [winter feed] and buying forage.” The European Drought Observatory (EDO) has described the drought as “an extensive and severe anomaly” affecting Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, the Baltics, the Netherlands and northern Germany.