The extreme weather that hit Israel over the past year has wreaked havoc on local agriculture, causing over 250 million shekels ($67 million) in damages, a new report found Tuesday.
The report, by the Kanat Insurance Fund for Natural Risks, said weather-related damage to the agricultural sector in 2018 was up by 25% compared to the previous year.
Some 10,200 reports of such damage were filed with Kanat: 4,800 from farmers in northern Israel, 2,600 from farmers in central Israel, and 2,800 reports were filed by farmers from the country's south.
Weather patterns in 2018 proved more unpredictable and were characterized by very specific and intense events that inflicted heavy damage to agriculture in shorts period of time, the report said.
This made the scope of the damage each incident cause much larger than incidents reported in 2017.
According to Kanat's data, fruit crops sustained the most damage in 2018, with apple, mango, cherry, plum, nectarine, peach, pear and date crops taking the hardest hits and damage amounting to NIS 63 million ($17 million). Tomatoes, onions, watermelon and bean crops also sustained significant damage, to the tune of over NIS 53 million ($14 million).
"Climate change has led to a significant change in the nature and intensity of the damage and unfortunately, we expect it to only get worse in the future," Kanat CEO Shmulik Turgeman said. "Farmers have no real way of coping with the economic damage caused."
