A French winemaker has decided to replace his vines with cacti in response to climate change. Boris Igonet, an organic winegrower based in the Pyrénées-Orientales in southern France, has turned to innovative techniques to cope with rising temperatures in the country.
Cacti replace vines in southern France
“When we first planted here, we put in 850 plants. The first year, some died and we replanted,” Igonet explains. After two more years of replanting with the same result, the winemaker eventually turned to a different crop—one more resistant to the dry summers that have hit France in recent years.
“We turned to plants from countries even harsher than ours to earn a living,” he says, showing a prickly pear plant, also known as nopal, a species of cactus native to Mexico and well adapted to arid climates.
The plant can be used in multiple ways: its seeds produce oil, the fruit is edible, and the plant itself can be eaten raw or cooked. The remaining fibers can even be turned into eco-friendly sponges.
Due to the drought, infestations of cochineals—tiny parasitic insects that feed on plant sap—have multiplied, destroying Igonet’s crops. Even young nopal shoots have been affected, prompting Igonet to rethink his planting methods and consider other options such as almond or pistachio trees.
“Switching to organic farming caused a drop in yields. Combined with the successive dry years, I now harvest four times less than I did ten years ago,” he says.
Since 2000—and especially since 2022—the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France has faced increasingly severe summer droughts. The years 2022 and 2023 were particularly extreme, with 22 out of 27 months recording below-average rainfall, in some cases more than 60% below the 1991–2020 average. Over this period, only 500 mm of rain fell, levels comparable to semi-desert regions. This has led to a dramatic drop in groundwater levels, dried-out soils, and record-breaking drought conditions, especially in the Roussillon plain and coastal areas.
Summer rainfall has drastically declined, with some areas receiving just 15 to 45 mm for the entire season—only 30 to 40% of the norm—and only one or two days of significant rain. Heatwaves have also become more frequent and intense: from just one every three years before 2000, the region now sees more than one per year, averaging 10 days annually between 2011 and 2020. The summer of 2022 set a record with 33 days of heatwave. Average summer temperatures have risen by about 0.4°C per decade since the 1960s. Climate projections suggest this trend will worsen, with both hot days and tropical nights increasing sharply by 2050, posing serious environmental and resource challenges for the region.