Agricultural Drought Phenomenon in Latin America with Focus on Brazil - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 156

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A gricultural Drought Phenomenon in Latin
A merica with Focus on Brazil
O RIVALDO BRUNINI, PEDRO LEITE DA SILVA DIAS,

A LICE M. GRIMM, EDUARDO DELGADO ASSAD,

A ND VIJENDRA K. BOKEN

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Latin America encompasses a vast territory between 12°30'N and 55°30'S
latitude and between 29°W and 82°W longitude. This subcontinent has 13
countries with complex climatic conditions. Extremely humid weather is
typical closer to the equator, while semiarid, arid, and desertic conditions
prevail in the Bolivian and Chilean high plains (figure 12.1).
The wide variation in climatic conditions leads to distinct agricultural
conditions across Latin America. For example, forests, equatorial fruits,
and perennial vegetation exist throughout the Amazonian region. Farther
from the equator, toward the Andes and at higher latitudes, there is a
noticeable change in agricultural systems. There is a greater emphasis on
growing cereal/grain crops in Argentina and Brazil.
The countries that compose the Amazon River basin experience a higher
amount of annual precipitation, and drought is not a characteristic phe-
nomenon there, except during high-intensity El Niño years (Marengo et al.,
2001). In contrast, drought is a regular event commonly observed in parts
of Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Argentina (Scian and Donnari, 1996), Uruguay,
and Brazil. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the most arid regions on
the earth, where the average annual precipitation is as low as 0.8 mm in
Arika or even 0.5 mm in other regions of this desert.
Figure 12.2 provides a more detailed description on climatic conditions
of Brazil. Although the average annual precipitation in the northeastern
region is less than 300 mm, it exceeds 2500 mm in some other regions of
Brazil (Grimm, 2003). Agricultural operations take place during the rainy
season (March-October). The northeast region is drought prone, but the
central, west, and southeast regions are traditionally grain-producing re-
gions. In the northeast and central-west regions, water deficiency is higher,
which seriously affects food production. Table 12.1 shows production
losses in Brazil due to climate anomalies including droughts that occurred

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