Farmers report ’catastrophic’ damage to crops as Storm Marta hits Spain and Portugal

Agricultural unions and local authorities in Spain and Portugal reported catastrophic damage to vital crop sectors on Thursday after Storm Marta swept across the Iberian Peninsula, bringing record-breaking rainfall and hurricane-force winds. The storm, which intensified late Wednesday night, ravaged thousands of hectares of olive groves, citrus orchards, and cereal fields, triggering an emergency response from regional governments. Farmers are facing total losses in some districts where the extreme weather event uprooted trees and flooded irrigation systems, arriving at a critical moment in the seasonal harvest cycle for many Mediterranean products. In Spain, the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura were hardest hit, with the COAG farmers' association describing the destruction as an unprecedented blow to the rural economy. Local meteorological agencies recorded wind speeds exceeding 120 kilometers per hour, which physically stripped fruit from trees and destroyed greenhouse structures. In Portugal, the Alentejo region suffered significant infrastructure damage, as swollen rivers burst their banks, submerging equipment and making many agricultural roads impassable for transport vehicles. Initial estimates suggest that the economic fallout could reach hundreds of millions of euros, though a full assessment is currently hindered by ongoing rainfall. Government officials from both Madrid and Lisbon have pledged to activate emergency relief funds to support the affected rural communities. The disaster comes as a major setback to the European agricultural market, which was already grappling with fluctuating prices and previous periods of drought. As weather conditions begin to stabilize, insurance adjusters and technical experts are being deployed to the fields to quantify the exact scale of the loss, while labor unions warn that the damage could lead to temporary supply shortages and price hikes for consumers across the continent.