Uruguay Declares Agriculture Emergency Due Drought

Rainfall is at a three-decade low in some areas of the country.

Uruguay declared on Monday emergency measures for farmers due to a serious drought in large areas of the beef and dairy producing country.

The government will provide farmers cattle feed with deferred, interest-free payments, aid for pumping water and extra time to pay their electricity bills, Livestock Minister Ernesto Agazzi said at a news conference.

Rainfall is at a three-decade low in some areas of the country, hurting farmers at the same time as they also struggle with falling demand and prices for key products due to the global economic slowdown.

"There is an agricultural and livestock emergency in some geographic areas of the country, not in the whole country, but it is in more than the 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) that I reported a few days ago," Agazzi said.

"This is going to last for a while. No one knows when it will rain," he said.

At the start of the year the government banned watering gardens, washing cars and filling swimming pools to try to conserve water. Temperatures are high in Uruguay during the summer months of January and February.

In addition, the National Emergency System has offered more than 200 water tanks, of up to 2,000 liters (530 gallons) each, to the country's 19 departments.

"We're in a total emergency situation. We are at the edge of a catastrophe and no one is going to escape the situation," said Juan Chiruchi, governor of the San Jose department, a dairy-producing area in southwestern Uruguay.

The lowest rainfall since the 1960s or 1970s is also affecting neighboring Argentina, where growers have asked for emergency aid as output levels of soy, wheat and corn are all threatened.