Honduran government uses cloud seeding to seek rain for drought-stricken farms

Dried corn and bean crops leave subsistence farmers without food

Honduras’ government has paid a Mexican company $750,000 for 20 flights to seed clouds and trigger rainfall over corn fields parched by months of drought in the rugged Honduran mountains. The Associated Press described the operation as a gamble by the Honduran government, aiming to induce enough rain over enough fields to help farmers and their crops survive.

José Francisco Ordóñez, a spokesman for the Honduran Secretary of Agriculture, defended the flights as one of a number of climate mitigation projects being carried out by the government and international aid groups. The other projects include fortifying existing irrigation systems, building water reservoirs, and distributing food aid, fertilizer and seeds to farmers hit the hardest.

In Nueva Concepcion, pilot Victor Torres is on the hunt for clouds, flying over parched corn fields in the rugged Honduran mountains. Pointing to a map on the dashboard, he banks the small plane sharply into a patch of dark gray. “We’re seeing strong cloud cover over here,” Torres said. Behind him, a technician cranks the knob of a large metal tank, which hisses as it sprays yellow silver iodide particles into the skies.

Ordóñez said the cloud-seeding program took advantage of recent clouds and rainfall briefly breaking up the painfully dry season to make the most of the water before the drought stretches on. He said the flights have boosted rainfall between 20% and 60% in key areas, compared to projected rainfall, and that the government hopes to extend it.

Meteorologists have routinely cast doubt on cloud seeding, saying weather modification is no solution to long-term drought. Some religious rural farmers see the flights as trying to play God with the weather. Nabil Kawas, a meteorologist and former dean of sciences at the National Autonomous University of Honduras, described the paid program as an expensive “experiment.” “This is an experiment,” Kawas said. “Now if you ask me whether I would have taken that $750,000 and invested it in an irrigation project or water reservoir … it would likely have a greater benefit to poor farmers who use the water for their crops.” Kawas said a previous cloud-seeding program in Honduras during comparable droughts boosted rain by less than 10%.

The Associated Press reported that the El Niño climate pattern, scrambling weather worldwide and now exacerbated by warming seas, has devastated communities across the Central American Dry Corridor, an arid region from southern Mexico through Panama. The effects are particularly acute in the dry forests of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, where corn and bean crops have dried up, leaving subsistence farmers without food. Cattle have either died or been sold off. Coffee plantations have withered and shrimp farms have lost production.

“Families are going to bed with one or two meals a day, and that’s after turning to other survival strategies like selling off their animals, their tools … just to get by,” said Aníbal Zúñiga, who coordinates World Food Program aid distribution in Nueva Concepcion, a 250-person village tucked in the mountains 90 minutes north of Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa.

The World Food Programme estimates that nearly 50 million people globally could be pushed into acute food insecurity now that El Niño is expected to last into 2027. Central America is among the places to be hit the hardest. In Honduras, one in five people already face some level of food insecurity in a normal year.

Carlos Alberto Hernández spends most of his days wondering if he and his wife will go hungry. They have long lived off their small patch of bean crops in Nueva Concepcion, and, like most people in the Dry Corridor, the 81-year-old farmer has never been able to afford an irrigation system, so they depend on the skies to yield their two yearly harvests. As Honduran authorities issued a series of drought alerts this summer, he watched his first crop of the year die. “We can’t afford to buy food. What we grow, that’s what we live off,” Hernández said. “Without water, we’re left with nothing.” Ordóñez estimated that farmers like Hernández have lost 80% to 90% of their crops during this year’s drought.

Hernández joined hundreds at the World Food Programme site, where he said he has spent many nights with an empty stomach, preferring to save the food he had for the next day. Thursday’s food shipment, funded by the World Food Programme and coordinated with the Honduran government, was the first such aid the community had received. Hernández dismissed the cloud seeding, saying what he and his neighbors need is help digging wells so they can survive with or without the rain.

Salvadoran authorities declared a six-month state of emergency to fend off a deeper crisis. Guatemala approved emergency measures to mitigate hunger in poorer indigenous communities, including importing staple grains without tariffs. The Associated Press reported that Nicaragua’s government tightly controls information. In Nicaragua, the exiled opposition criticized the lack of an emergency declaration or contingency plan. Nicaragua’s government did not respond to a request for comment.

The recent rainfall, which was expected before the cloud seeding began, has given farmers some hope. Hernández has planted bean seedlings that could provide him with steady food by December if more rain falls. The World Meteorological Organization now projects that El Niño will persist until February, and the U.S. National Weather Service predicted that it will strengthen and likely break records. For the Dry Corridor, that likely means what little rain they usually get will fall elsewhere, feeding everything from floods to hurricanes in other regions.

In Nueva Concepcion, another crop failure would be a second blow in a year when families have already sold whatever they could to buy food and have few resources to recover, Zúñiga said. Hernández keeps a close watch on his small patch of bean sprouts, peeking out from soil that had been cracked and dry. “You go to bed at night, and you wake up in the morning praying to God that he sends water,” Hernández said.

Megan Janetsky wrote the report. Moises Castillo in Nueva Concepcion, Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City, and Marcos Alemán in San Salvador contributed.

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