Major crop losses hit Central America due to El Niño

Prolonged dry weather associated with the El Niño phenomenon has severely reduced this year’s cereal outputs in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, putting a large numbers of farmers in need of agricultural assistance as the sub region tries to recover amidst ongoing dryness, FAO said Monday.
This is the second consecutive year that the region’s main season cereal harvest has been negatively affected by severe dry weather related to El Niño.
The Central American Agricultural Council – headed by agriculture ministers of the sub region, has declared a state of alert after hundreds of thousands of subsistence farmers have suffered the partial or total loss of their crops planted for the main grain season that runs from May to September.
Early estimates from Central America’s main de prima harvest suggest declines of as much as 60 percent of maize and 80 percent of beans due to dry weather caused by El Niño, a weather phenomenon characterized by abnormal warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean.