Alberto Puente - AP
Mexico is seeing the worst drought since 1941 when the country first began recording rainfall. About 1.7 million farm animals have died of starvation and thirst.
DURANGO, Mexico -- The sun-baked northern states of Mexico are suffering under the worst drought since the government began recording rainfall 70 years ago. Crops of corn, beans and oats are withering in the fields. About 1.7 million cattle have died.
Hardest hit are five states in Mexico's north, a region that is being parched by the same drought that has dried out the southwest United States. The government is trucking water to 1,500 villages scattered across the nation's northern expanse, and sending food to poor farmers who have lost all their crops.
The next rainy season isn't due until June, with no guarantee of normal rains.
"This is the most severe drought the country has registered," President Felipe Calderon said Thursday at a meeting with governors from hardest hit states Durango, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Coahuila and San Luis Potosi.
Those states average about 21 inches (542 millimeters) of rain annually. This year they got 12 inches (308 millimeters), according to Mexico's National Weather Service.
The drought started last fall with the arrival of the La Niña weather condition that causes below-normal rainfall.
Mexican farmers have lost 2.2 million acres of crops to dry conditions and 1.7 million farm animals have died this year from lack of water or forage, according to the nation's Agriculture Department.
The scarcity of rainfall also has dried up drinking water supplies for an estimated 2.5 million people in more than 1,500 small communities in northern Mexico. Federal authorities are sending trucks with water to the towns, treating it on the spot and storing it in tanks that are distributed to residents, said Victor Nishikawa, an official in the government's Social Development Department.
The federal government has begun a temporary jobs program to provide income to 1.5 million farmers and the day laborers who normally work the fields during harvest season.
Drought will continue through the winter, and the situation will likely worsen, authorities said.
