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Venezuela rations water in response to drought

Whitewing

Well-known member
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/02/venezuela.water.rationing/index.html

Drought conditions have reduced reservoir volume to critical levels, officials say. The level of the Camatagua Reservoir, which supplies Caracas with about half of its water, has been on a downward trend since 2007, according to data from Hidrocapital. However, it's not as low as during the early 2000s. Some water-rationing measures were taken at the time, too, according to Hidrocapital.

In Miranda State, which sits adjacent the capital, the Lagartijo Reservoir is at the lowest level ever recorded.

The government says that the El Nino phenomenon -- unusually warm waters in the equatorial Pacific that affects weather around the globe -- is behind the dry conditions.

Venezuela's National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology also pointed a finger at something called quasi-biennial oscillation, which affects winds in the stratosphere.
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
Another article that focuses on food production.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48972

Further south, in the central plains where much of Venezuela's food is produced - although two-thirds of what Venezuelans eat is imported - the problems Martínez is experiencing at her home are reflected in a massive fall in cereal yields.

"The drought has hit between 70 and 80 percent of the maize, rice and sorghum crops in (the north-central state of) Guárico. Sixty thousand hectares of maize are a total loss and another 60,000 hectares are severely affected," said the head of the Guárico Association of Cereal Growers, Vicente Figuera.

In most of Venezuela, the rainy season is from April or May to October or November, and the rest of the year is the dry season, but this year the dry season was longer and the rains scantier.

The government's goal of producing 22 million tonnes of food this year is receding in the light of lower predicted cereal yields. While it was hoped the white maize harvest would reach 1.5 million tonnes, producers now forecast a total yield of one million tonnes, less than last year's harvest.

Only 700,000 tonnes of yellow maize, a basic animal feedstuff, is expected this harvest, half a million tonnes less than last year. Another agribusiness leader, Antonio Pestana, said the rice harvest would yield between 3,500 and 4,000 kg per hectare, while last year the average for the country was 4,500 kg per hectare.

"Low yields are also being seen in crops like coffee, in the Andean highlands of Venezuela, Colombia and other countries in the region, because the coffee trees are flowering early and the developmental stages of the beans have been modified because of the drought," Eulogio Chacón, head of the Institute of Environmental and Ecological Sciences at the University of the Andes, in southwestern Venezuela, told IPS.
 

hopalong

Well-known member
Big Muddy rancher said:
Gee where's all the rain reader was yapping about? :?

Yea I was thinking the same thing, thought she said there was flooding all over the country, but of course she also said a lot of things that did not hold "water" lol
 

Liveoak

Well-known member
hopalong said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
Gee where's all the rain reader was yapping about? :?

Yea I was thinking the same thing, thought she said there was flooding all over the country, but of course she also said a lot of things that did not hold "water" lol

So has Hugo Chavez.
 

hopalong

Well-known member
Liveoak said:
hopalong said:
Big Muddy rancher said:
Gee where's all the rain reader was yapping about? :?

Yea I was thinking the same thing, thought she said there was flooding all over the country, but of course she also said a lot of things that did not hold "water" lol

So has Hugo Chavez.

Yea but Hugo was not in this forum telling Whitewing what the weather was like in his part of the world. Major flooding and all!! :wink:
 

Whitewing

Well-known member
hopalong said:
Liveoak said:
hopalong said:
Yea I was thinking the same thing, thought she said there was flooding all over the country, but of course she also said a lot of things that did not hold "water" lol

So has Hugo Chavez.

Yea but Hugo was not in this forum telling Whitewing what the weather was like in his part of the world. Major flooding and all!! :wink:

She did make me chuckle with those posts. Anything for a laugh I guess. :p
 
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