Climate change is affecting agricultural production in the US-Mexico border in the Mexicali valley, an area long known for growing wheat and cotton. Many farmers are changing their crops or even leaving the region in order to deal with this growing crisis.

CGTN’s Martin Markovits reports.
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Israel Andrade has been working on land passed down from his parents for 50 years. But rising temperatures are affecting the harvest in his farm near the U.S. border in Mexicali. He said wheat production has dropped dramatically in half.

It’s not just Israel who has been affected. 2016 was the worst harvest in the last five years with production droppingby 15 percent compared to the previous year.

According to the Ministry of Agricultural Development of the state of Baja California, more than 4,000 employees are quitting farming to seek better opportunities elsewhere. And this number is expected to increase. According to the National Academy of Science of the United States of America it is estimated that by 2080 between one to six million adult Mexicans will migrate.

The region also has to deal with a limited water supply and dry climate, that rarely exceeds 4 inches of rainfall per year.

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