Perilous
Times and Climate Change
North Mexico wilts under worst drought on record
By FRANCISCO SALAZAR and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ | AP
A cow tries to eat from a dried out cactus on a field near the
city of Torreon, Mexico, Thursday Dec. 1, 2011.
Mexico is seeing the worst drought since 1941, when the country
began recording rainfall.
Drought will continue to plague northern Mexico during the winter
months, and the situation will likely worsen, authorities said.
DURANGO, Mexico (AP) — The sun-baked northern states of Mexico are
suffering under the worst drought since the government began
recording rainfall 70 years ago. Crops of corn, beans and oats are
withering in the fields. About 1.7 million cattle have died of
starvation and thirst.
Hardest hit are five states in Mexico's north, a region that is
being parched by the same drought that has dried out the southwest
United States. The government is trucking water to 1,500 villages
scattered across the nation's northern expanse, and sending food
to poor farmers who have lost all their crops.
Life isn't likely to get better soon. The next rainy season isn't
due until June, and there's no guarantee normal rains will come
then.
Most years, Guillermo Marin harvests 10 tons of corn and beans
from his fields in this harsh corner of Mexico. This year, he got
just a single ton of beans. And most of the 82-year-old farmer's
fellow growers in this part of Durango state weren't able to
harvest anything at all.
"I almost got a ton of beans. It's very little, but you have to
harvest whatever you get," said Marin, who depends on his crops to
sustain himself and the seven grown children who work with him.
The family has five plots of 20 acres (8 hectares) each in the
town of San Juan del Rio, an area at the foot of the Sierra Madre
Occidental mountains dotted with farming and ranching villages
whose only water comes from seasonal rains.
Those have been lacking for more than a year in much of Mexico.
Its been the country's worst dry spell since 1941, when the
government began recording rainfall.
"This is the most severe drought the country has registered,"
President Felipe Calderon said Thursday at a meeting with
governors from the hardest hit states of Durango, Zacatecas,
Chihuahua, Coahuila and San Luis Potosi.
Those states average about 21 inches (542 millimeters) of rain
annually. This year they got 12 inches (308 millimeters),
according to Mexico's National Weather Service.
To the north, Texas also has endured its driest year on record.
Since March, Texas has recorded seven of the 10 driest months it
has seen during the past 116 years. In August, officials there
estimated losses for crops and livestock at $5.2 billion.
The drought started last fall with the arrival of the La Nina
weather condition that causes below-normal rainfall. To complicate
things, the region didn't get much rainfall from hurricanes and
tropical storms during the hurricane season that just ended, said
David Brown, regional climate services director for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Fort Worth, Texas.
"That's part of the reason we have this bad drought going on in
Mexico and Texas," Brown said.
Mexican farmers have lost 2.2 million acres (900,000 hectares) of
crops to dry conditions and 1.7 million farm animals have died
this year from lack of water or forage, according to the nation's
Agriculture Department.
Durango, a sprawling inland state about 150 miles (250 kilometers)
south of Texas, holds 1.3 million acres (540,000) acres of planted
land. Of that, "85 percent has been damaged and the rest has had a
very low yield," said Rene Almeida, the Agriculture Department's
top official in the state, which was once known as a film setting
for John Wayne westerns.
The situation also is critical for ranchers. At least 30,000
cattle have died in Durango this year from lack of food and water,
Almeida said.
Sergio Mier, a farmer and rancher in the Durango town of Vicente
Guerrero, said the price of cattle has plummeted as farmers
struggling for money rush to sell their livestock.
"Right now you can buy a cow for as little as 600 pesos ($42),
when the price is usually 5,000 pesos ($356)," Mier said. "People
don't have money because they didn't get a harvest. They have no
money to eat or to feed their animals so they have to sell them."
Felipe Arreguin, deputy director of the National Water Commission,
said the hardest blow has been to seasonal farmers and ranchers
with non-irrigated pastures in Durango, Zacatecas, Chihuahua,
Coahuila and San Luis Potosi.
"In the north we have a terrible drought ... and it's first
affecting the people with the least resources," Arreguin said.
In Zacatecas's region bordering Durango, about 1.2 million acres
(500,000 hectares) have been lost. That is about half the state's
arable land.
"The situation for the people of Zacatecas is truly dramatic
because farmers were not even able to produce the food they need
for their own consumption," said Zacatecas Gov. Miguel Alonso.
The same happened along the Texas border in Chihuahua state, where
half of the 1.3 million acres (545,000 hectares) planted with
corn, beans and oats didn't yield anything, according to the
Agriculture Department.
Chihuahua state Rural Development Secretary Octavio Legarreta
estimates agriculture losses at 3.7 billion pesos ($250 million).
He said 180,000 cattle have died due to the drought but didn't
have estimates of financial losses on livestock.
Authorities have bought 11 tons of corn and beans to distribute
among 50,000 Tarahumara families, some of Mexico's poorest people,
who live in caves and makeshift houses throughout Chihuahua's
rugged Copper Canyon, Legarreta said.
The scarcity of rainfall also has dried up drinking water supplies
for an estimated 2.5 million people in more than 1,500 small
communities in northern Mexico.
Federal authorities are sending trucks with water to the towns,
treating it on the spot and storing it in tanks that are
distributed to residents, said Victor Nishikawa, an official in
the government's Social Development Department.
Arreguin, at the National Water Commission, said most dams are
down to 30 percent to 40 percent of capacity and some are even
lower.
"What we're doing now is planning how to distribute the little
water we do have between now and June, when the rainy season is
supposed to start," Arreguin said.
The federal government has begun a temporary jobs program to
provide some income to 1.5 million farmers and the day laborers
who normally work the fields during harvest season.
The program, which started in October, was initially funded with
about $3.8 million and includes jobs cleaning water canals and
building cattle pens. An additional $3.4 million will be used to
buy food, Nishikawa said.
"We want to make sure people have enough to eat, that they have
drinking water and some income," he said.
Federal authorities are also encouraging farmers to plant grains
that require less water and are helping ranchers find markets for
cattle they are forced to cull from their herds, Arreguin said.
Drought will continue to plague northern Mexico during the winter,
and the situation will likely worsen, authorities said.
The federal government has already declared an emergency for the
states of Zacatecas and Durango, where a cold front this week
dropped temperatures to nearly 8 degrees below zero (minus 22
Celsius) in some mountain areas.
"Unfortunately, the cold fronts that we're getting are dry fronts,
and when you combine that with the drought, it is really hard on
the soil and on human beings," Arreguin said.
___
Associated Press writer Ricardo Chavez in Ciudad Juarez
contributed to this report.