(The Watchers) – Approximately 106,000 farm animals have perished so far due to drought in Chile, reports confirmed on October 5, 2019. This year’s dry spell is the country’s worst in six decades, leaving crops destroyed and dead animals in the field.
According to the agriculture ministry, mostly goats, cattle, and sheep died due to a lack of water and fodder. “Going out and seeing the animals dead on the ground is so horrible,” Erick Hurtado stated as he gazed across the paddocks of his family’s farm in Petorca, near Valparaiso. Hurtado’s farm has lost half of its 60 head of cattle. In Colina, north of the capital Santiago, the drought has been disastrous for small farmers. Sandra Aguilar said out of about a hundred head of cattle her family-owned, only half survived. Several farms in the province of Chacabuco were hit hard by the dry weather.
“The situation is complicated. We have to be realistic, climate change is here to stay,” Governor Javier Maldonado said. In La Ligua village near Valparaiso, 73-year-old Dominga Mondaca’s garden used to be full of fruits and trees. The area is now nothing but cracked earth. “We have had many years with little water. But the last year, it didn’t rain at all,” she said. READ MORE
