Wine producers in the Colchagua valley say that damage to irrigation systems meant that some fields could not be watered for up to two weeks after the earthquake.

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But past takeovers have resulted in irrigation systems breaking down and once fertile fields reverting to barren bush: hence the current food crisis.

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Lucrative rice crops are being hard hit, too, as saltwater creeps into aquifers beneath the fields, contaminating wells used for irrigation and killing crops.

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Model farms were established to show farmers how their fields could flourish by using this sophisticated irrigation method.

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John McTiernan and his wife Donna Dubrow, fresh from Los Angeles and the film industry, threw themselves into restoration, breeding new livestock (a lean-meat hybrid called a Beefalo), replanting tired fields, building reservoirs, and repairing old irrigation ditches.

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Past fields of sugar cane and a network of narrow irrigation ditches, a narrow pass leads to a flat area surrounded by hills.

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