Empty Grain Barges 照片檔

Empty grain barges "parked" along the Madeira riverbanks near Porto Velho. During the last 6-8 weeks of the dry season in the Amazon Basin, most rivers drop in water level, making navigation difficult. The Madeira suffers a level difference greater than 7 metres, but unlike the Mississippi basin, the drought does not coincide with the grain harvest, which reaches its peak in the Brazilian "Cerrado" region just when the Madeira river is close to its highest water levels. Some barge convoys can have 20 barges and carry 40,000 metric tonnes of grains to the port of Itacoatiara, at the mouth of the Madeira river, about a thousand kilometres down river.