Striking truckers in Brazil have disrupted supplies and exports from one of the world’s agricultural powerhouses, triggering the premature slaughter of millions of chickens as feed failed to reach farmers.

The strike over high fuel prices has paralyzed Brazil, the top global exporter of soybeans, sugar, coffee and chicken. Industrial action could spread to the country’s oil sector on Wednesday, when workers plan to start a 72-hour strike.

Farmers and merchants in Latin America’s largest economy have been unable to get their supplies to port during the nine days of industrial action. The strike has been slow to unwind even after the government agreed to subsidize diesel prices in a bid to end protests.

Losses to farmers alone so far in the strike are estimated at 6.6bn reais ($1.76bn, £1.33bn), the country’s CNA farm lobby said on Tuesday, adding that it could take farmers six months to a year to recover from the impact of the protest.

Disruption to the supply of animal feed has had a devastating impact on livestock. About 70 million chickens had been slaughtered as of Monday because producers have no food for them, said the poultry and pork processing association ABPA.

If they begin to starve, chickens start eating each other, so meat packers have culled flocks quickly, ABPA said.

Farmers were running out of space to dispose of their carcasses, it said.

Brazil is the world’s top chicken exporter, accounting for over a third of global exports, and is a major supplier to Asia and the Middle East. ABPA estimated that the country had lost 120,000 tonnes in potential exports since truckers began protesting.

Nearly 4,000 trucks of beef are sitting on roadsides throughout the country, and the meat will soon rot, said the beef packer trade group Abiec. Only two of Brazil’s 109 beef processing plants continued to operate, according to Abiec, and even those plants were working at half their capacity.