The Nation, April 21, 2021
Climate Change and Capitalism Are Forcing Chilean Farmers to Abandon
Their Land
Severe drought and a privatized water system have left small growers
high and dry.
By Agostino Petroni and Sandali Handagama
Covering Climate NowThis story is published in partnership with Nexus
Media News as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism
collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
In 2018, Marta Morales, a 35-year-old small farmer, was forced to leave
her hometown of Colliguay in rural central Chile. Morales grew up
cultivating her family’s one-acre plot, producing vegetables to eat and
to sell for income. But over the last decade, the dependable rhythm of
dry summers and rainy winters gave way to prolonged drought, making it
difficult to maintain the farm.
“In the past, it rained more,” Morales said in Spanish. “Farmers took
turns irrigating their farms with water from mountain streams. Today,
there are almost no streams left.”
Lacking enough water to nourish their crops, farmers began to leave
Colliguay. In the years leading up to Morales’s move, three schools in
Colliguay shut down, including the one closest to her house, because
there were so few children left. Worried about her toddler’s education,
she joined the throngs of growers migrating to cities.
Since 2010, Chile has been suffering from what experts call a
megasequia, or megadrought. It is currently the most water stressed
nation in the Western Hemisphere, with up to 76 percent of the country
enduring drought conditions. The drought has hit farmers like Morales
especially hard. Grappling with critical water shortages and a system
that privileges large-scale agricultural operations over artisanal
growers, many small farmers are now moving to cities.
“We grew up as farmers, and reinventing ourselves in the city is not
easy,” Morales said. “It is hard to lose ties with the earth, the sun
and nature. It is sad and painful.”
The drought is the product of multiple factors. The world recently
entered La Niña, a period when cool ocean waters rise to the surface of
the eastern Pacific, which can make rainfall in Chile more sporadic. La
Niña fits a larger cooling pattern in the eastern Pacific that is part
of the natural fluctuation in the Earth’s climate.
Human-caused climate change is also contributing to the drought. Warmer
air temperatures are shrinking glaciers that feed streams and rivers and
disrupting rainfall patterns. A 2015 study found that climate change is
to blame for around a quarter of the rainfall deficit in central Chile.
El Yeso, one of the main reservoirs supplying water to Santiago, on
March 19, 2016, and March 14, 2020. The reservoir is fed by melting snow
from the surrounding mountains. Amid the ongoing drought, the mountains
are seeing less snowfall, leading to lower water levels in the
reservoir. (Nexus Media News/NASA)
“In central and south Chile, we’re seeing important changes to the
landscape,” said Lisandro Roco, a professor of agricultural economics at
Universidad Austral de Chile, and a member of the UN Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. “We have a more dry landscape. We have less
forest and less green in the summer.”
In Monte Patria, a small community in Chile’s arid north, 15 percent of
the town’s farmers have migrated elsewhere. These farmers constitute the
first documented case of internal displacement in Chile due to climate
change, according to the United Nations. Other towns are emptying out as
the drought drags on.
“People are leaving because they cannot keep on doing agriculture,” said
Carolina Alvarado Aspillaga, a farmer and activist from Colliguay.
“Older people can’t transmit local knowledge to kids because kids
migrate to the city, and they don’t come back because there is no water.”
Arturo Herrera Román, a small winegrower from the Marga Marga Valley in
central Chile, makes wine from grapes that were brought over by the
Spaniards in the 16th century. He said that, for the most part, he used
to be able to rely on rainfall to grow his grapes. He only had to
irrigate his fields once or twice a year.
But now, rainfall is scarce, and Román has not been able to irrigate his
fields in the past five years due to water shortages. He said the Marga
Marga Valley was once home to many producers, but now only a handful are
left.
“The lack of rainwater can be seen in the color of the trees and the
loss of species such as cinnamon and peumos [a Chilean evergreen tree],”
Román said in Spanish. “The fact that we are still producing wine is an
act of resistance against climate change, but as the years go by, it
becomes harder and more unsustainable. It’s hard to say if we will be
here 10 years from now.”
One factor making things more difficult for many small farmers is that
Chile is the only country in the world with a fully privatized water system.
The Chilean constitution ensures access to water, but in practice,
market forces decide who gets water rights, Roco said. In this tug of
war, industrial farmers growing export crops, like avocados, are able to
pay more for water, boxing out small farmers.
“The domestic market is mainly supplied by small-scale farmers,” Roco
said. “But it’s more difficult for these small, family farmers to adapt
to climate change.”
The Codigo de Aguas, the water code, came into being during General
Pinochet’s dictatorship. Under the code, water rights go to the highest
bidder. Over the years, rivers, glaciers, and underground water rights
have been sold to international firms, mainly in mining and large-scale
agriculture. Many small farmers struggle to navigate the complex
registration system that was created to keep track of water rights, Roco
said.
“Farmers are not able to register for water rights because the register
is too complicated and there is a lack of information,” she said.
“Additionally, there are people who purchase water rights, but don’t use
them. They’re waiting to sell the rights for a higher price in the market.”
Andrea Soledad Cisternas Araya is a farmer from Freirina in the Huasco
Valley, a fertile area bordering the Atacama desert. Farmers in her
community have restricted access to water coming from rivers—Araya pays
a monthly fee equivalent to $10 USD for a few liters of water to partly
irrigate her crops. Farmers are also banned from digging wells if they
do not own the rights to the underground water. Araya, who advocates for
small farmers’ water rights, said that the Huasco Valley was once green,
covered with fruit trees and roaming cows. Today, almost everything is
gone, and farmers are on the move.
“We are clearly feeling the effects of climate change, because we live
in a semi-arid desert. When I was a child, it used to rain every 5
years. Today, it rains every 15 years,” Araya said in Spanish. “The
rivers are disappearing.”
Local activists have been pushing for reforms, with some success. Last
year, Chileans voted to rewrite their constitution, and soon they will
elect members to a constitutional convention. Activists are hoping to
put an end to water privatization through this process. And last month,
the Chilean congress passed a bill to create a ministry to oversee the
43 institutions handling water rights. For now, however, Chile still
lacks a long-term framework for addressing water scarcity, Roco said.
“Water access is a pressing issue in Chile. People are aware of it.
People are demanding a new governance system for water,” Roco said. “As
long as farmers face water shortages, people are going to keep moving.”
Agostino Petroni is an Italian author and journalist living in New York
City. He is a Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow and a graduate of the
Columbia Journalism School.
Sandali Handagama is the Global Macro & Policy Reporter at CoinDesk, an
Overseas Press Club Fellow, and a 2020 Graduate of Columbia Journalism
School. Her name goes like Sun-Duh-Lee.
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