Pig farming should be located in the south of the state to protect the water. Photo: (La Jornada Maya)
Mérida, Yucatán, (10 August 2021) .- The karst soil of Yucatán causes the filtration to go straight to the water table, so they indicate that pig farming is potentially environmentally harmful, having at least one and a half meters of land (as a protective barrier to the water table ).
The Homun area, where there is conflict between the residents and the owners of a large pig farm, is an area that is “full of natural caves, cenotes, the soil there and there is only 5 centimeters (2 inches) of soil layer” explains Dr. Francisco Bautista Zúñiga from the Center for Research in Environmental Geography (CIGA) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Together with Dr. Yameli Aguilar Duarte, which rooms of the Yucatecan soil are to keep pigs with less damage to the environment and health.
The answer can be found in its location in the south (Muna, Oxkutzcab, Santa Elena, Tekax, Ticul and Tzucacab), where there is a minimum depth of one and a half meters to the water, but through the study they also suggest, consult the local population, before setting up a pig farm.
“If the soil layer is very thin, the water table remains completely susceptible to contamination during normal human activity. But if we’re talking about a farm with 50,000 pigs that produces 50 tons of manure a day, where does that end up? In the groundwater, ”says the specialist.
He assures that no reactor has yet been invented to treat so much manure, and that the farms produce for export rather than local consumption, “the meat goes away and the manure stays.”
“In the Yucatan, two main problems have combined: heavily polluting farms and a very sensitive environment, which he believes requires a strong groundwater protection environment with a one-and-a-half meter layer of soil; where it doesn’t rain that much and there are no cenotes nearby. Places with these characteristics can be found in the south of the Yucatán, ”added the expert.
Based on his research, the expert suggests a place with deep soils because it can function as a sewage treatment plant, “Soils are reactors, they are natural water purification plants, sewage treatment plants for solid waste, but they have to be deep”.
For this reason, the technology in Yucatecan farms is very high, but it points to the special and special needs of the karst soil, which is why he himself is coordinator in the Mexican Association for Karst Studies (AMEK), which as must have all specialties about the peculiarities of the Yucatan information that differ in the north, south and center of the national territory.
“The authorities need to act on the matter so that they can resolve the issue with the law in force, and it is also a call to pig farmers not to be fooled,” he says.
Dr. Francisco Bautista Zúñiga also sees poverty as a problem that increases with this type of industry because the salaries are very low and, being in the wrong areas, the same salary must be used to go to the doctor for the sake of the complications to be treated.
“A poor man who gets sick from the farms has to spend the money he doesn’t have on medicine,” concluded the specialist.
Source: The Mayan Journey
The Yucatan period
Newsroom
Remarks
Remarks
Comments are closed.