Honduras has paid 750,000 dollars for 20 flights aimed at provoking rain as drought damages maize and bean crops in the mountains. The move sends a Mexican company into the sky over dry fields where farmers and aid workers are waiting for clouds that may or may not produce rainfall.
Víctor Torres flew over withered maize fields in Nueva Concepción while searching for clouds. From the airplane, Torres said: "Estamos viendo buena nubosidad por ahí".
Nueva Concepción and the dry season
The cloud-seeding technique releases silver iodide particles into the sky. José Francisco Ordóñez, a spokesperson for the Secretaría de Agricultura de Honduras, said the program is one of several climate-mitigation initiatives, alongside strengthening existing irrigation systems, building water storage tanks, and distributing food aid, fertilizers, and seeds to the most affected farmers.
Aníbal Zúñiga, who coordinates aid distribution for PMA in Nueva Concepción, described the strain in families already living with food insecurity. "Muchas veces, (las) familias se acuestan con dos tiempos (comidas) al día, donde ya han tenido que también usar estrategias de sobrevivencia".
El Niño across Centroamérica
The drought has lasted for months in the mountains of Honduras, and El Niño has deepened the pressure across the Corredor Seco in Central America. That dry corridor stretches from southern Mexico to Panama, and maize and bean crops have withered in the dry forests of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
One in five people in Honduras already faces some degree of food insecurity in a normal year. The World Food Programme estimates that nearly 50 million people could fall into acute food insecurity worldwide if El Niño persists until 2027.
Nabil Kawas on the experiment
Nabil Kawas, a meteorologist and former dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, called the effort an experiment. "Este es un experimento," he said, adding: "Si yo hubiera agarrado estos 750,000 (dólares) y lo hubiera invertido en un proyecto de riego, por ejemplo, o un reservorio de agua… probablemente habría mayor seguridad, que haya mejor beneficio para esta gente pobre".
Kawas' criticism captures the split around Honduras' response: the government is treating cloud seeding as one tool in a wider drought response, while meteorologists question whether it can deliver anything lasting for farmers whose maize and beans have already withered. The 20 flights are meant to chase rain, but the result of the program has not yet shown up in the fields.
