By Amanda Perobelli and Lisandra Paraguassu
ELDORADO DO SUL, Brazil (Reuters) – After three days of heavy rain, Edite de Almeida and her husband fled their flooded home in early May and released their modest dairy herd to higher ground. Nearby, the water rose above her head and within a day they were lapping against the roofs of houses.
Record-breaking flooding in southern Brazil, the result of weather patterns intensified by climate change, has only begun to ease after displacing half a million people and killing more than 160 in Rio Grande do Sul state .
The full extent of the losses is still emerging, especially in rural areas where farmers like Almeida and her family produce much of Brazil’s rice, wheat and dairy.
Of her sixty laying hens, only eight survived. Their cows have nowhere to graze in the flooded landscape.
“I’m not grieving. I’m grateful because there are many who have lost much more than us,” Almeida said. “I am grateful that we survived and I mourn for those who lost family.”
“Now the priority is saving the animals. The calves are still suckling,” she added.
Her husband Joao Engelmann has made daily journeys on foot, tractor and boat to bring the herd whatever food he can find. He returns every evening, soaking wet, after wading through their farms with friends, helping to remove the decayed livestock and tending to the survivors.
A neighbor found a dead pig in his bedroom. Rice and vegetable fields have been washed away everywhere.
These were among nearly 6,500 family farms flooded by this month’s heavy rains, according to analysis of satellite data by consultancy Terra Analytics.
The floods have roiled agricultural markets as they disrupted soy crops, washed away silos, trapped farm exports and killed more than 400,000 chickens. The government is ramping up rice imports to soften the impact on national inflation rates.
Washed-out farms and roads around the capital Porto Alegre have contributed to food and water shortages in the area, causing the crisis to disrupt the lives of more than 2 million people.
Parts of the state have received more than 700mm (28 inches) of rain so far this month, the national weather service INMET reported – more than London’s average rainfall in a year.
As the water began to recede in recent weeks, Almeida got her first glimpse of her destroyed home, with stained walls, destroyed appliances and belongings covered in mud.
“I can’t think about the future. It belongs to God,” Almeida said. ‘I don’t expect to get what I had before again. We’re starting over,” she added, grimacing through tears.
START OVER
Almeida and Engelmann know what it means to start from scratch.
They met in the 1980s in one of the first encampments of the Landless Workers Movement in central Rio Grande do Sul, where the movement – the largest of its kind in Latin America – took off and occupied rural properties to demand land reform .
They married and had their first children in that camp, called Cruz Alta, before the state government allowed them to settle in Eldorado do Sul, about 70 km west of Porto Alegre.
They are among 30 families in the settlement who produced enough rice, vegetables, milk, eggs and pork to support themselves, build and furnish houses and send their children to university.
All of that is at stake because of the floods.
Almeida, Engelmann and their daughter sleep on a truck bed in a neighbor’s warehouse and improvise a household routine as they get their lives back on track.
“I experienced all this in the encampments: the challenges of cooking and sleeping. I learned to live like that. But I didn’t think I would do it again,” Almeida said.
One of her best friends, Inacio Hoffmann, 60, had only been retired for four months when floods ravaged his farm, killing 13 of 22 dairy cows.
“It’s so somber to take away and bury these creatures that we cared for every day,” Hoffmann said. He doubts whether he should leave everything behind and try a new life somewhere else.
Almeida said her family is determined to stick it out.
“We came from nothing. We returned to nothing. Now we start again.”
(Reporting by Amanda Perobelli and Lisandra Paraguassu in Eldorado do Sul; additional reporting by Ricardo Brito in Brasilia; Editing by Brad Haynes and Alistair Bell)
