Large hail, bigger than a hazelnut according to some accounts, fell over Debreshte and flattened the tobacco in a few minutes. Not before planting, not after the harvest - but precisely at the stage when the leaf is at its most fragile and the buy-up was still weeks away.

A violent storm with torrential rain and large hail swept the Prilep and Dolneni areas in the afternoon. The heaviest rainfall was recorded in Malo Konjari near Prilep and in the villages of Debreshte and Ropotovo in the Dolneni municipality. Witnesses on the ground say the ground turned white within a short time from the sheer volume of hail.

Residents posted footage of the storm and photographs of ruined crops on social media. The worst-hit areas were around Debreshte, where agricultural crops, gardens and yards were destroyed.

Why tobacco specifically

Tobacco is not an ordinary crop in this area - for many families in Debreshte and the surrounding villages it is the main annual income. An entire year of work - seedlings, planting, hoeing, picking leaf by leaf - is invested in a plant that ten minutes of hail can take away. And unlike wheat, a damaged tobacco leaf is not simply sorted out of the batch: it drags down the grade of the entire crop.

The precise extent of the damage is yet to be established. The relevant services are expected to go out into the field and assess the value of the material loss.

That is the sentence every farmer in Macedonia knows by heart, which is exactly why it offers the least comfort. The assessment is made, the report is written, and then the waiting begins. Macedonia still has no functioning crop insurance system that would cover events like this at scale - so storm damage usually stays the private loss of one family, even when it is an entire village.

Farmers were already squeezed this year. Producers in Strumica are protesting over the buy-up price of peppers, and now hail has taken the Prilep tobacco. Different crops, different corners of the country - but the same point: the income of the person who feeds the state depends on factors he cannot control, and on institutions that respond after the damage is done.