Drought crisis in Philippines
rice cultivation in the Philippines – photo by jonicdao (source: Flickr Creative Commons)
Typhoons in October devastated agriculture and caused heavy damages to infrastructure in the Philippines. Now a drought is destroying crops and threatening electricity supplies in the Southeast Asian nation, the New York Times reports.
Nearly 400,000 acres of farmland have already been affected, and agriculture officials expect the drought to continue, perhaps until July.
–New York Times
The government of the Philippines is responding with monetary aid to farmers and fishermen; water rationing, drilling wells and even cloud-seeding.
An AFP article credits the weather phenomenon of El Niño as the cause of the drought in the Philippines:
El Nino is an occasional seasonal warming of the central and eastern Pacific Ocean that upsets normal weather patterns from the western seaboard of Latin America to east Africa, and has caused droughts in the Philippines before.
The government is also encouraging farmers to switch from growing rice to the cultivation of less water intensive crops like fruits and vegetables.
by Graham Land
Graham Land grew up in Washington, D.C., where he was part of the local hardcore punk scene. Through this unique musical movement he became involved in grass roots anti-racist activism, animal rights and Ecology. Since 2000 Graham has lived in Europe, earning an MA in history from Malmö University in Sweden and working as a musician, English teacher, sports therapist, customer service agent and writer. Graham has a podcast with author Saci Lloyd and is currently pretending to work on his first novel.
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Tags: agriculture, crops, drought, El Nino, New York Times, Philippines, rice
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