Durango, Mexico --

The sun-baked northern states of Mexico are suffering under the worst drought since the government began recording rainfall 70 years ago. Crops of corn, beans and oats are withering in the fields. About 1.7 million cattle have died of starvation and thirst.

Hardest hit are five states in Mexico's north, a region that is being parched by the same drought that has dried out the southwest United States. The government is trucking water to 1,500 villages scattered across the nation's northern expanse, and sending food to poor farmers who have lost all their crops.

Life probably won't improve soon. The next rainy season isn't due until June, and there's no guarantee normal rains will come then.

Most years, Guillermo Marin harvests 10 tons of corn and beans from his fields in this harsh corner of Mexico. This year, he got just a single ton of beans. And most of the 82-year-old farmer's fellow growers in this part of Durango state weren't able to harvest anything at all.

The family has five plots of 20 acres each in the town of San Juan del Rio, an area at the foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountains dotted with farming and ranching villages whose only water comes from seasonal rains.

Those have been lacking for more than a year in much of Mexico. It has been the country's worst dry spell since 1941, when the government began recording rainfall.

"This is the most severe drought the country has registered," President Felipe Calderon said Thursday at a meeting with governors from the hardest hit states of Durango, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Coahuila and San Luis Potosi.

Those states average about 21 inches of rain annually. This year they got 12 inches, according to Mexico's National Weather Service.

Mexican farmers have lost 2.2 million acres of crops to dry conditions and 1.7 million farm animals have died this year from lack of water or forage, according to the nation's Agriculture Department.