In late 2009 I visited coffee farmers in Bukalasi, a small village on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda. Last month, several days of continuous torrential rain triggered mudslides, killing hundreds of people in Bukalasi's nearby villages, and the town has become a camp for refugees who have had to leave their homes as a result of the flooding. With deforestation a major contributing factor in the massive landslides that have already collapsed from the waterlogged hillsides, and with more heavy rain forecast, the Ugandan government is talking of evacuating up to 500,000 people living on Mount Elgon to safer, more stable ground - perhaps shifting them permanently.
In Mexico…
When I was in Chiapas in southern Mexico in early 2009 I met with coffee farmers, all members of the ISMAM co-operative, in two separate villages. They had their own unhappy tale to tell - for the past four years, they have struggled to produce sufficient coffee to live off, due to erratic weather patterns which wreak havoc on their coffee production.
Alberto Velasquez, one of the coffee farmers I met explained to me 'The seasons aren't normal any more. We don't get so much sun in the summer, and not as much rain in the rainy season as we used to'. For Alberto and his neighbours, with their coffee harvest down by up to 90% in 2009, this was a major problem. 'We won't have enough money for food this year, and there will be nothing to pay for anything else'.
In Colombia…
Farmers are currently experiencing their third straight year of harsh weather - two years of heavy rain followed by drought conditions this year - which has hurt the national coffee harvest so badly that the country is currently importing coffee from Peru to satisfy its domestic demand.
In Palestine…
Palestine is coming through its worst drought in 30 years and, in a land where olives and olive oil contribute an important part of export earnings, the olive harvest was so small this year that Palestinians have had to import olive oil to meet their local requirements. We have had to pay a high price to our trading partner, PARC, for the little olive oil that we have bought in the hope that by selling it on at the same higher price we will keep our trade with the group alive.
In Paraguay…
Paraguay has suffered from severe droughts as well, and the last sugar harvest for the members of the Manduvira co-operative from whom we buy was down 60% on normal. Visiting sugar farmers there in May 2009, just prior to the harvest, I was shown crops of sugar cane which were less than half their normal size. For farmers who in a normal harvest year already pass through several difficult months prior to receiving payment for their annual sugar harvest with very little cash, on the back of such a tiny crop this year's 'tiempo muerto' (dead time)has been very hard for them.
In New Zealand…
From where we sit, there may not often be much we feel we can do to alleviate the problems farmers living below the poverty line in the developing world face when extreme weather threatens their livelihoods. However, surely the least we can do is to empathise with them and to understand their plight. For farmers who struggle to earn a living wage in average climatic conditions, any change in their local weather patterns - of the kind we're seeing a lot of right now - always makes life tough.
0 comments:
Post a Comment