 Families survive on one meal in drought-hit Zimbabwe Buhera, Zimbabwe (AFP) Oct 5, 2019 - In eastern Zimbabwe's parched Buhera district, Omega Kufakunesu's family has been forced to scale down daily meals to just a portion of vegetables and sadza, a thick maize-meal porridge. In the morning only the children get the porridge, and everyone skips lunch. "During the day we have wild fruit collected by the children, and at night we have smaller portions of sadza with vegetables," harvested from the communal village garden, said Kufakunesu, sitting outside her thatched round hut. A palmful of shumha, a drought-resistant wild fruit, is all she will eat during the day until dinner time. "We have reduced our food portions so that its enough for everyone," she said. But there are days when "my husband and I don't eat at all" to make sure the children have some food, she said. Zimbabwe is experiencing one of the worst droughts in history, blamed on the effects of the El Nino weather cycle. In addition, the former regional breadbasket is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in a decade with inflation estimated to be over 900 percent. -'More hungry people than ever'- Because of the combined effect of drought and an ailing economy, more than five million rural Zimbabweans, nearly a third of the population, are going to face food shortages before the next harvest in 2020. A disturbing feature of this year's food shortages is the increase in the number urban poor who are vulnerable. The government estimates that up to 2.2 million people in towns and cities are struggling to feed themselves. WFP country representative Eddie Rowe said there are "more hungry people than ever before in Zimbabwe". In August, the United Nations extended its appeal for aid -- from $234 million in February to $331 million to feed the combined total of over seven million Zimbabweans, roughly half the country's population. Buhera is home to around 300,000 people and experiences dry spells even during good rainy seasons. It is one of the areas hardest hit by the drought. To make matters worse, it was in the path of Cyclone Idai which devastated Mozambique and parts of eastern Zimbabwe earlier this year. -'Bartering wire mesh for food' - According to the UN, most of Zimbabwe's 60 districts will have exhausted their staple maize stocks by October. The Kufakunesu family and neighbouring villagers have been lucky to have boreholes to draw water for drinking, washing and watering the garden -- but the water is drying up due to the heat and scanty rain. The UN's World Food Programme has been handing out food parcels - cooking oil and porridge for children under fives - and US$8 in cash per month for every family member. But the payouts are only restricted to the so-called lean months. At Joni, a neighbouring village, 49-year-old Fungai Mugombe, one of three wives and a mother of seven, used the money set up a simple wire mesh making project. "People buy the mesh wire for fencing, and we make a small profit. I sometimes exchange the fences with food," Mugombe said outside a cluster of huts where a red bougainvillea adds colour to a bleak dusty landscape. Freeman Mavhiza, the district administrator, said the government was providing villagers with irrigation facilities and seed for drought resistant crops such as millet and sorghum. President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said the government had budgeted $120 million for the production of "strategic crops, such as maize, soya beans and cotton".
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For Erick Hurtado, the worst thing about the drought that has devastated his family farm in Chile is the dead animals.
"Going out and seeing the animals dead on the ground is so horrible," Hurtado says as he gazes across the dusty paddocks of his farm in Petorca, near the coastal city of Valparaiso.
Farmers are counting the cost of one of the driest austral winters in six decades, which has destroyed crops and left tens of thousands of farm animals dead in the fields of central Chile.
Hurtado's farm, owned by his grandfather, has lost half its 60 head of cattle.
So far, 106,000 animals have died due to lack of water and fodder, mostly goats, cattle and sheep, according to the agriculture ministry.
President Sebastian Pinera, who last month announced a $5 billion plan to improve water distribution, this week set up a crisis group of government agencies to tackle the water crisis, which he said had become "more extensive and more intense."
In Colina, north of the capital Santiago, the drought has been hard on small farmers. Scrawny cattle pick at sprigs of strawy grass on pastures that have turned to dust. Cows, goats and horses roam hungry on hills have turned to a dry muddy brown.
"The drought has been disastrous for us," said Sandra Aguilar. Her family owned about a hundred head of cattle. Today, only half survive thanks to a trickle of water provided by a neighbor who still has some reserves.
"The situation is complicated," said Javier Maldonado, governor of the province of Chacabuco, where several agricultural areas have been hit particularly hard by the drought.
"We have to be realistic, climate change is here to stay," he said.
- Water shortages -
Dominga Mondaca points out the deep fissures that run through the garden behind her house in the village of La Ligua near Valparaiso. The garden used to be full of strawberries and citrus trees; now it's cracked earth.
"We have had many years with little water. But the last year, it didn't rain at all," said the 73-year-old, one of more than 600,000 people the government is supplying by tanker trucks as part of emergency measures.
She says she has had to give up raising chickens, in order to keep what little water she and her husband receive for their own consumption, washing and cleaning. Whatever is left, she uses to sprinkle on herbs in a small kitchen garden.
The agriculture ministry says 37,000 family farms need assistance in the central Chile.
- Thirsty avocados? -
In Petorca, some rivers have run dry, and the landscape has been left parched, but lush avocado and citrus plantations are nevertheless thriving.
Locals in Petorca say the real, long-term problem is the mismanagement of water resources.
"There is an excess of monoculture plantations that consume all the water," said Diego Soto of the Movement for the Defense of Access to Water, Land and Environmental Protection (MODATIMA) told AFP.
Avocados need a lot of water to grow, said Soto.
"An avocado tree needs 600 liters of water per week, whereas humans consume 50 liters a day, or 350 liters a week," he said.
Producers refute these figures and say the real problem is a lack of infrastructure to store water, both above and below ground.
"The avocado is not a crop that needs more water," insisted Francisco Contardo, chairman of the local producers' committee.
Avocados are a key export for Chile, mostly to the US and China, but drought has reduced exports by 25 percent.
- Less snow -
For many though, the changes being wrought by climate change are overwhelmingly obvious. Snow in the highlands of central Chile was relatively scarce this year.
Scientists predict an average decrease of between five and 10 percent snowfall every 10 years in almost the entire Andes mountains, one of the country's main sources of water.
"The central zone of Chile is highly dependent on the summer melt season, its snow and glaciers, which means that if the snow cover is reduced, there is also a reduction in the availability of water resources," said Paul Cordero, climate change expert at the University of Santiago.
Weak snowfall forced the country's main ski resorts to use artificial snow machines much earlier and more often this season than in previous years.
"Chile has been living as if it were a country with an abundance of water," said Pinera.
"Climate change and global warming have changed this situation probably forever."
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