Barges can only carry a fraction of their capacity, with the remaining produce having to be transported by rail or road. The greatest drawbacks of the latter are that several dozens of trucks are needed to transport a ship's cargo, and road transport is much more dangerous than water transport.

The drought is causing increasingly greater problems in France. The lack of rainfall seen in France in the past several weeks has put river cargo transport in jeopardy. The level of the Rhine River is so low that boats with the capacity of 2500 tonnes are filled to only 900 tonnes to prevent the bottom of the boats from scraping the riverbed, France Info reports.

The port of Metz on the banks of the Mosel, a tributary of the Rhine, has also significantly decreased its activity due to the situation, although it is France’s number one river port handling grains transport. France exports more than 2 million tons of cereals a year from there to the Benelux states, the Netherlands and Germany, but this year the level of the Rhine is especially low. Although grains storage facilities are full, the amount accumulated cannot be shipped out.

River freight transport is the most efficient way of transporting cereals, but it does not work as it should, so the remaining cargo is transported by rail and road, says Vincent le Ber, the leader of Lorca, a co-operative comprising agricultural actors. There are, however, several problems with that. Firstly, a cargo ship can carry about 2000 tonnes on average, whereas a truck can only transport 30 tonnes, meaning that transporting a ship’s cargo by road requires 60 trucks. A larger chance of accidents is another disadvantage of road transportation, as far fewer accidents occur on rivers than on roads, le Ber added.

These are not the only problems with inland waterways transportation, however. The price of river good transport has recently skyrocketed, said Jean-Marc Thomas, the manager of CFNR, a company dealing with shipping on the Rhine. The reason for this is the recommissioning of coal-fired power plants in Germany, in order to offset the threat of a cessation of Russian gas, Jean-Marc Thomas said. The coal needed for those power plants is transported by ship, because there is no other alternative for Germany. This has led to the sudden increase in waterway shipping prices.

Citing the above reasons, the manager anticipates a 20-25 per cent drop in river transport for July and August only in the port of Metz.

The problems, however, do not only impact France, the CNews portal reports. Germany’s largest companies have also sounded the alarm, warning that a significant disruption of river traffic could deal another blow to an economy already plagued by logistics difficulties.

As a result of the 2018 drought – when the water level of the Rhine in the area of Kaub decreased to 25 cm in October – German GDP shrunk by 0.2 percent according to data from Deutsche Bank Research. The figures clearly illustrate that a decline in inland waterway transport has serious economic consequences.