Brazil has too much water…and too little!

Brazilian news is often positive these days but there are exceptions.

In recent weeks certain areas of the country have suffered badly from flooding due to excessive rain. This has been particularly true of the states of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janiero but it's also been a serious feature elsewhere. Although tragic deaths have been relatively few, many thousands have been affected with their homes, facilities and infrastructure either totally destroyed or at the least badly affected throughout the waterlogged areas.

These were mainly in the east or central regions of the Country. However, in parallel to this, another and ironically, opposite climatic problem is badly affecting other (more southerly) areas. This is serious drought. Too little rainfall as opposed to too much!

For the last two months, more than three million people have been affected, in over 500 towns and districts in Santa Catarina, Parana and Rio Grande do Sul. The severe lack of water has obviously hampered agriculture to a very challenging extent as well as disrupting the daily needs of families, institutions and businesses of all kinds.

Recent rainfall levels have improved in some of the area but as yet not enough to redress the problem to any real extent. An example of the scale of the problem comes from Santa Catarina.The organisation ‘Epagri’ (The Company for Agricultural Research and Rural Extension) has reported that the drought damage to agricultural production in the area has so far reached a value approaching half-a-billion Brazilian Reis, an enormous sum.

The main casualty seems to be corn, with a loss of nearly two-thirds of a million tons of expected production. This is a drop of about one-sixth. And it’s a similar story in other areas too (especially Parana and Rio do Sul) throughout the drought ridden south. Both national and state governments are doing what they can in partnership with municipalities, but so far, palliative measures have been limited in their effects.