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Carnauba DOS DANTAS, Brazil – 150 years since more than land that feeds the Dantas family, cotton plantations, grown to a river carries that leads to the waterfall when a man’s hips up beanstalk and enough rain.
However, in recent days, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees river dried up, crops and 30 cattle were growing rapidly in the last rest of the family were consuming water pool.
80-year-old Batista Inácio Dantas, worn in a hammock in a balanced way, “then fifty years will be a living soul here.” “I’m telling my grandchildren that it is very difficult to work.”
16-year-old grandson Hellena listened and pushed back. He grew up here. “I plan to work in this land,” he said.
Scientists disagreed with the grandparents. the vast majority of Brazil’s northeast, actually turning into desert – a worsening desertification process in general, called the planet.
Climate change is a criminal. However, tough economic Faced true with local residents, but also long-term results that give rise to – farm animals to trees such as cleaning and clay for removing the tile industry of the region – they take short-term decisions.
desertification in the region, which is home to half a billion people is a natural disaster occurring in slow motion. northern China and North Africa with away from Russia and American Southwest.
The process usually does not lead to sand dunes reminiscent of the Sahara. Instead, higher temperatures and less rain, combined with deforestation and over-farming land parched, lifeless and almost starved, not feed crops, and makes even the grass to feed livestock.
I was able to One of the biggest threats civilization’s ability to feed itself.
agricultural economist at the University of Bonn in Germany Alisher Mirzabaev, “There is already a large number of desertification evidence that reduce the impact on food production and crop yields,” he said. 2019 United Nations report on the subject. “And it will get worse with climate change.”
northeast of Brazil, the world’s most densely populated arid areasRoughly 53 million people are among those most at risk. Area known for droughts and poverty, inspirational novels poor field workers who are forced to leave the land, and also about a type of music called Baiao. accordion-aided lyrics difficult to describe life here.
But things are getting worse. The region lived from 2012 until 2017 and recorded the longest drought this year, Another drought has dried up most of Brazil.
The United Nations in August the most recent major report on climate change An increase in temperature of northeastern Brazil, a sharp decline in groundwater and more frequent and intense droughts said it was facing. Satellite images and field tests, the productivity of land already losing 13 percent, showing almost the rest of the region is at risk.
“Reaches a tipping point,” he said Humberto BarbosaYears examining the northeast of Brazil, one of the best experts on desertification. “A point of no turning back.”
President Jair Bolsonaro, did not take significant measures to reverse the process. Instead, owned Withdrew their landscaping, Miners and farmers while strengthening and moderating a sharp increase in deforestation inside country. This helps to feed extreme weather cycles. Government data released last month showed that the destruction of the Amazon forest the worst in 15 years.
increasing deforestation in Brazil, officials threatened worldwide for its ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere of the Amazon rainforest alarmed. But at the same time, the shadows humidity in the air and the soil is the primary cause of desertification.
Dusty towns and family farms in the region Seridó resulting from industrial plants, impacts on land residents, is shown most clearly by the rise of the ceramic industry.
In the early 1980s, local businessmen saw an opportunity in frequent drought. When rivers and reservoirs evaporate, which is perfect for most of the country to produce the popular red roof tiles, clay rich in nutrients, they reveal the bottom.
These entrepreneurs, landowners began to pay for mud and employed hundreds of people, dozens of ceramics factory in a few years. Parelhas a population of 21,000, this is by building a metal belt on the main road into town, “China Capital” was declared.
Adelson Olivera da Costa, manager of Parelhas began as one of the first factory in 1980, it was one of the pioneers in the industry ten years after the purchase. Recently, thousands of tile hard to dry in the midday sun a few dozen workers in small factories.
Mr. da Costa, in the cramped office, “the drought is good news for us,” he said. 30 employees and that a son and said that dozens of employees of the neighboring factory run by a girl.
ceramic for a region that has long been dependent on crop and livestock production, was the beginning of an economic leap. But over time, the results were clear. Factories, tile made by mixing clay with water and then cooking wood burning oven. All these ingredients – water, wood and clay – wherein insufficient.
Mr factory, one of the smaller operations in the region Costain, using a 2,500 gallon nearby wells without water for more than a week. “People not sure,” he said about water, “but we think that we never ran out of water.”
Recent studies estimateStill, the region is reduced groundwater.
The factory’s furnace runs all night from Monday to Friday. Just before 5 o’clock on a weekday morning, two men pulled bodies from the huge pile of branches and six fireplaces and filled them in an oven that heats the size of a house. Operation 60 to 75 cubic meters or five weeks tipper consume large enough to fill a timber truck.
Then there is the main ingredient of clay tiles. Years ago, Mr. da Costa, said that the clay dry lake bed near a few miles of operation. Now with exhausted, it draws away the mud for hours.
Desertification subsequent to the Brazilian government scientist Aldrin Perez, one centimeter of soil deposition that lasted 300 years, said of the ceramics company that takes three to five feet every time they remove the clay soil. Formed millions of years, they do not have meters depth in seconds, “he said.
This may have a devastating effect. They remove earth and clay, it is very important to maintain an appropriate balance of nutrients and moisture in the surrounding land.
Mr Costa’s also the director of the factory Damião Santos Ferreira, explaining why some people hesitate to sell the clay, “the region’s killing,” he said. “It’s never the same.”
Factory, is paying about $ 10 for 30 tons of clay to the landowners, he said.
Until now, most of you know the results landowner. Nevertheless, many people are still desperate to sell up. One of them was Mr. Dantas.
In 2010, in another tough dry season, he said he almost bit of money Mr. Dantas family. Themselves and decided to earn money to feed their cattle from the mud.
“Everyone agreed,” said Mr Dantas. His son Paulo, “It was necessary,” he said.
Clay, Mr. Dantas’s great grandfather came from a reservoir to supply water to 506 acres of land which was built in the 19th century. Every dry season, when the family left behind fertile bed to evaporate beans, corn and cotton had sown. It was one of the most fertile land.
But the family in 2010, the four men instead of planting a shovel to dig the soil and watch the drawing. It took them three months. They paid about $ 3,500 for Clay.
Money, then helped the family survive during drought years time coming. However, almost barren land around the reservoir. After several years Paulo Dantas corn, snap beans and watermelon were, but the product they feed the cattle he was so pathetic.
Then, last year it rained a lot more rain than normal. The reservoir was filled up to about six feet. Mr Dantas’s grandson Hellena, in the face. When dry, the seeds sowed family. Enlarge grass for cattle, but beans and maize left.
Mr. Dantas about selling as clay, “I really regret it,” he said. “I see no good. But the children were in need of it.”
Standing at the reservoir set, at sundown looked parched land. “I had no other choice,” he said.
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