The Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC) said that the lack of rain has brought the country to the verge of a food production crisis. The CNC reckons that already the drought has cost farmers M$15bn (US$1.2bn). The CNC said that 75% of the maize crop in Puebla, Hidalgo, Aguascalientes, Michoacán, Guanajuato and Tlaxcala has been lost. That is 2.5m hectares (ha) of ravaged crops.
The CNC said that the current drought is the worst for 70 years. It claims that 7m ha of crops could be lost because of the drought. This would affect the livelihoods of 3.5m peasants and could lead to a shortage in supplies of Mexico's food staples: maize and beans.
Ranchers are also suffering. The Confederación Nacional de Organizaciones Ganaderas reckons that 50,000 head of cattle have died of thirst this year.
José Luis Luege, the president of the Comisión Nacional del Agua (Conagua), doubts that the country is running out of water because the northern dams are in good shape. Conagua said that dams in Chihuahua, Tamaulipas, Nuevo León and Coahuila were at between 60% and 90% of their capacity. Luege said that the earliest he saw water shortages was in 2010.
The government is hoping that hurricanes will dump a lot of rain in central Mexico and restore aquifers there. There are signs that the Caribbean hurricane season will be impressive. So far this year, since the start of the hurricane season in May, 10 hurricanes have hit Mexico (seven from the Pacific and three from the Atlantic). None of them produced much rain.
The Conagua does admit that some of its central and southern dams have low water levels. The country has 800 reservoirs. The dams serving Mexico City, for example, are at only 40% of their capacity. Mexico City's boroughs are already introducing water-saving measures. The big problem with Mexico City, however, is that the conurbation has denuded the natural aquifer. As Mexico City lies in a high valley, water from outside the valley has to be pumped up to reach the city and lots of it is lost in transit.
The agriculture minister, Alberto Cárdenas, has launched a project that will channel M$900m (US$70m) to mostly small producers. He said that of the expected food production for 2009 of 201m tonnes, 112m tonnes had been produced by July.
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