SANTIAGO, Oct 5 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Farmers are counting the cost of one of the driest austral winters in six decades, which has destroyed crops and left tens of thousands of farm animals dead in the fields of central Chile.
So far, 106,000 animals have died due to lack of water and fodder, mostly goats, cattle and sheep, according to the agriculture ministry.
The ministry says 37,000 family farms need assistance in the central Chile.
President Sebastian Pinera, who last month announced a $5 billion plan to improve water distribution, this week set up a crisis group of government agencies to tackle the water crisis, which he said had become “more extensive and more intense.”
“Chile has been living as if it were a country with an abundance of water,” said Pinera.
“Climate change and global warming have changed this situation probably forever.”
In Colina, north of the capital Santiago, the drought has been hard on small farmers. Scrawny cattle pick at sprigs of strawy grass on pastures that have turned to dust. Cows, goats and horses roam hungry on hills have turned to a dry muddy brown.
“The situation is complicated,” said Javier Maldonado, governor of the province of Chacabuco, where several agricultural areas have been hit particularly hard by the drought.
“We have to be realistic, climate change is here to stay,” he said.
“The drought has been disastrous for us,” said Sandra Aguilar. Her family owned about a hundred head of cattle. Today, only half survive thanks to a trickle of water provided by a neighbor who still has some reserves.
For Erick Hurtado, the worst thing about the drought that has devastated his family farm in Chile is the dead animals.
“Going out and seeing the animals dead on the ground is so horrible,” Hurtado says as he gazes across the dusty paddocks of his farm in Petorca, near the coastal city of Valparaiso.
Hurtado’s farm, owned by his grandfather, has lost half its 60 head of cattle.
For many though, the changes being wrought by climate change are overwhelmingly obvious. Snow in the highlands of central Chile was relatively scarce this year.
Scientists predict an average decrease of between five and 10 percent snowfall every 10 years in almost the entire Andes mountains, one of the country’s main sources of water.
“The central zone of Chile is highly dependent on the summer melt season, its snow and glaciers, which means that if the snow cover is reduced, there is also a reduction in the availability of water resources,” said Paul Cordero, climate change expert at the University of Santiago.
Weak snowfall forced the country’s main ski resorts to use artificial snow machines much earlier and more often this season than in previous years. — NNN-AGENCIES
