By David L. Brown
I usually don’t write short posts on this blog. In fact, some may think I’m too verbose. Well, guilty I guess, although I like to examine subjects in depth and analyze the various factors involved. In this case, well, I’m merely going to post the map below, just released by the U.S. Agriculture Dept. It shows those counties reporting drought disaster. It requires no comment.
By David L. Brown
Yesterday I posted an analysis of the current forecasts for a poor corn crop due to heat and drought, and also mentioned that the obvious step to take is to suspend all ethanol production to free up the approximately one-third of the U.S. corn crop mandated to go to distilleries and into our gas tanks. If the corn crop drops by a significant degree, as seems likely, that mandated amount of corn will take an even larger bite out of the supply, perhaps even surpassing one-half of the total.
It’s deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra said. Back in 2008 I posted this editorial cartoon that appeared on the cover of Quill, the magazine of the Society of Professional Journalists. (I am a 50-year member of SPJ and am immediate past-president of the New Mexico chapter.)
That cartoon is even more appropriate today, because the USDA is refusing to put a stop to the travesty even though a world food crisis is inevitable, putting hundreds of millions at risk of famine. And today, writing in The Financial Times, José Graziano da Silva, the director-general of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization, wrote (as reported by Reuters here):
“Much of the reduced crop will be claimed by biofuel production in line with U.S. federal mandates, leaving even less for food and feed markets,” he wrote in an op-ed just a day before the U.S. government issues a pivotal crop report that is expected to show U.S. corn output falling to the smallest in six years and stockpiles at near record lows.
“An immediate, temporary suspension of that mandate would give some respite to the market and allow more of the crop to be channeled towards food and feed uses,” he wrote in a high-profile yet indirect message to Washington.
Obviously, the line has been drawn in the sand by those in charge in Washington and it’s to favor the owners and operators of ethanol plants vs. hundreds of millions of endangered human beings. And not to mention the “inconvenient truth” of food shortages and higher prices right here at home. Already, as I mentioned yesterday, ranchers are liquidating their herds in the face of dried-up pastures and hay crops. How bad is it way out West? I saw a post a few days ago from a rancher in west Texas who said that he’s received just three inches of rain in the last two years. His critters have long since gone to market and he’s facing a bleak future.
By David L. Brown
The drought in America not only isn’t getting better…it’s getting a lot worse. The combination of heat and lack of rain has put a large portion of the nation’s field crop prospects in severe jeopardy. The Associated Press today has an update, and the news is far from encouraging. (You can read the AP article, “Report: Drought Worsens in Key Farm States” here):
The latest statistics from reporting agencies reveal that the proportion of cropland in Iowa that’s in extreme or exceptional drought more than doubled just in the last week, from 30.74 percent to 69.14 percent now. In Illinois, the levels of extreme or exceptional drought rose to 81.18 percent. And in Nebraska, the percentage of land in those categories rose by another 8 percentage points to 91.2 percent of the total.
It’s hard to grasp just how serious the implications of such catastrophic figures are for our future, and the degree to which the situation has worsened in just since the last weekly report is ominous to say the least. Overall, more than one-half of the nation’s corn crop is rated poor to very poor.
The conditions in Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska are particularly serious. You may think, well those are only three states so can it really matter that much? Well, first, they’re not the only states that are in trouble, but there’s something special about those three, Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. That special thing is that they are generally our nation’s three largest producers of corn. Let’s look at last year as a benchmark. According to a USDA report issued in September, 2011, Iowa’s corn production was projected at 2,296,250,000 bushels. Illinois came in second at 1,980,300,000 bushels, and Nebraska was in third place at 1,544,000,000 bu. Between those three states alone a total of 5, 820,550,000 bushels were projected. That’s just under six billion bushels of corn.
How much was the entire nation projected to produce when the harvest was done? Good question, I’m glad you asked. The answer is 12,497,070,000 bushels. About 12.5 billion bushels, of which about 5.8 billion came from those three states of Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. Which means that those three states represent about 46.4 percent of America’s total corn crop as of 2011 and the other 47 states produced only 53.6 percent of the total (and just to make sure you understand, crops in many of those states are experiencing extreme drought stress).
Note also that the U.S. usually grows about 40 percent of all the corn in the world, and is the largest exporter by far. What all this means is that that old Nemesis Famine is about to stalk the planet. Drought is also being experienced in other parts of the world, including India and China with their huge populations that need to be fed. Some countries, such as Egypt with about 80 million people in a country that is 97 percent sandy desert, are almost totally reliant on imports of grains, including corn which is used to grow livestock and poultry for food. Other nations, such as Mexico with its need for tortillas, are also dependent upon imports of American corn.
By David L. Brown
As drought and heat continue to destroy a significant portion of the US crop, a large tranche of corn continues to be mandated for use in ethanol production. The purpose of this is to enrich farmers and channel money to corn producing states in order to secure votes. (It makes no kind of economic sense as a fuel source.) Now that the world faces more widespread famine (it’s already been a reality in many places for several years), it might make sense to shut down the ethanol plants for the time being, as this excerpt from an article today on WIRED (here) suggests (emphasis added):
“In the short run, USDA needs to figure out a way to remove the mandate on ethanol use from corn,” said Timmer [an agricultural economist]. “If we could free up 20 to 30 percent of the U.S. crop, reduced as it is, it would bring corn prices down very quickly.
New speculation limits are scheduled to be enacted by year’s end, but drought means that may be too late, said Bar-Yam [president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, a kind of scientific and technology think tank]. In the meantime, the USDA has rebuffed all requests to reduce corn biofuel allotments.
So it would make sense, but the USDA isn’t having any part of that. Well, duh because obviously farmers and ethanol barons are more important than 7 billion human beings and the reputation of the United States. Well, how is it going to fly when third world people are starving wholesale? They get to suffer and die horrible deaths while the U.S. in all the great wisdom of the USDA (headed by a rain-praying lawyer and professional politician) continues to turn huge amounts of corn into ethanol. Do we want to make America the Great Satan in fact as well as in name? If so, this will certainly do it. With hardly any effort at all we can make our country the most hated in the history of the world. When you open a future dictionary to the word “Evil” there will be a picture of Uncle Sam pointing at you. That’s what these idiots are doing.
Meanwhile, here’s a chart showing what happens when food prices rise. The numbers represent incidents of social unrest.
The Wired article suggests that “some think” food prices may have led to the so-called Arab Spring (it’s pretty plain that they did), and that therefore it was a “good thing.” Boy, if that’s good I’d hate to see what they consider bad. The idea that a bunch of raving lunatics taking over third world countries has something to do with “democracy” is totally nuts. It’s anarchy is what it is, followed by theocratic chaos, mayhem and murder. Somalia et al. are hardly models for Jeffersonian democracy. Incidentally, if you doubt the connection, note the number of incidents of food-related social unrest last year in the nations most affected by the Arab Spring: Tunisia 300+, Libya 10,000+, Egypt 800+, and now Syria 900+. Hmm, where there’s smoke and so forth.
One could assume that the 2008 and 2011 events (all centered on sharp rises in the UN’s FAO food index shown by the black dotted line) will be followed by similar events in spades when the presently developing food price spike gets its boots on (which is happening right now). Many of these represent small, insignificant countries (in Western eyes, at least although the indigenous peoples might beg to differ), but there are also some significant ones, including India with 1.5 billion mouths to feed. What happens if a major population subset such as India falls into out-and-out famine? India is presently suffering a reduced Monsoon so food shortages may be coming there soon, incidental to the crisis in world supplies which will severely limit or eliminate the possibility of filling production shortfalls with imports.
China doesn’t appear on the chart and I don’t understand why, because it also has been suffering something like 50,000 minor revolts and demonstrations each year, many of which must be food related. I guess it’s not on the list because the wise leaders of China say “nuh uh, it didn’t happen.” They must have legions of Winston Smiths busily rewriting history there in the Middle Kingdom. Northern China is also presently affected by drought. If India or China (or both) were to fall into widespread famine and anarchy It would be like Somalia X1000.
By David L. Brown
Note: This item is cross-posted from Ag Dead End (www.agdeadend.com).
Drought is already rearing its head in many parts of the world, most recently in north China, Australia, and Russia and the Ukraine. Experts say we can expect more in the coming years. Here’s a snippet from an article from Reuters posted on the Scientific American website:
Increasing drought has long been forecast as a consequence of climate change, but a new study from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research projects serious impact by the 2030s. Impacts by century’s end could go beyond anything in the historical record, the study suggests.
The study warns that by 2100 unprecedented drought can be expected in some of the world’s most populous areas, including southern Europe, northern Africa, the western U.S. and much of Latin America. Some areas, including much of Canada and Russia may see increased rainfall — which isn’t necessarily a good thing since rain in excess can be as damaging to farm production as drought. Just this year heavy rains significantly reduced crop yields in Canada, and last year’s harvest in the eastern Corn Belt was plagued with wet conditions.
How serious can things get in those regions threatened with serious drought in the coming years? The article explains:
To get an idea of how severe the drought might get, scientists use a measure called the Palmer Drought Severity Index, or PDSI. A positive score is wet, a negative score is dry and a score of zero is neither overly wet nor dry.
As an example, the most severe drought in recent history, in the Sahel region of western Africa in the 1970s, had a PDSI of -3 or -4.
By contrast, the new study indicates some areas with high populations could see drought in the -15 or -20 range by the end of the century.
We don’t have any concept of how serious drought of that severity would be, since it is beyond our experience. The only thing we can conclude is that it will not be good.
Climate change is a serious threat because our civilization has been built (and in fact has over-built) upon conditions as they have been in recent centuries. Significant change in climate patterns, something that is probably already taking place, has the potential to gravely impact human society. The most important message is that those changes might be taking place faster than expected, and with the possibility of tipping points the picture could change even more quickly. Drought, excess rainfall, more serious storms, hotter temperatures—all these will undermine the ability of farmers to produce enough food to feed an increasingly hungry world.
By David L. Brown
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book DEAD END PATH: How Industrial Agriculture Has Stolen Our Future. This work, in the form of an extended essay, is the result of a lifetime of experience and study. It is written in an easy-to-read style and thoroughly documented with more than 250 footnotes and a bibliography of nearly 150 volumes included in its nearly 300 pages.
DEAD END PATH is unusual in that it is part essay, part memoir, part speculative journalism and part research-based analysis. It examines the serious challenges that face the human race, including the unhappy facts that as human population continues to grow the resources on which our technological civilization depends are being depleted through runaway “progress” and “development,” code words for the destruction of the environment in the interests of profit for the few.
Many of the ideas in this book have been discussed in this weblog, including population issues, resource peaks, and economic considerations. The main argument of DEAD END PATH is that while most of the structural problems of our civilization can be traced to over-population, that core fact itself rests on the short-sighted use of industrial methods to produce more food in the short term than the Earth can sustain. As resources peak and begin to decline, a food crisis looms ahead of us at the terminus of the path we have taken.
To give you the general flavor of this work, here is the official description from the publisher’s website:
DEAD END PATH is an important book because it describes in simple, jargon-free words the critical dangers facing humanity, including many facts that the media seldom report. It’s an extended essay on how industrial agriculture has led us down an unsustainable path that threatens our very civilization. The danger is real and looming before us in the here-and-now. Our petroleum-based technology is reaching its limits and the coming collapse will likely trigger a domino-like food crisis that will change the world forever.
Readers will learn how machine technology has transformed food production and pitted the human race against Nature herself. Topics include over-population, resource depletion, climate change, economic realities and the long-term outlook for human survival. Part journalism, part history, part memoir, part essay — this book aims to entertain and inform curious readers in non-technical language. The subjects of this book are possibly the most important issues of the 21st Century, a stark reality that is little reported by the media and largely ignored by world leaders. Every thinking person should be aware of this looming threat to civilization, the real-life story that unfolds in the pages of DEAD END PATH.
To help bring the message of DEAD END PATH to a wider audience, I have begun to create a new website at www.agdeadend.com. It is only partially constructed, but you may find it interesting to visit it now to read the text of the Author’s Note from the book in which I explain my personal life’s journey and how it resulted in the writing of this book. Please bookmark and return to it as it takes form. It will contain news and commentary relating to the subject of the book.
By David L. Brown
Coming soon: Billions and billions of Australian Plague Locusts.
According to the poem by Robert Frost, some think the world will end in fire, some in ice… Well, ask an Aussie and he’s more likely to bring up drought and plagues of locusts. We know that Oz has been suffering years of relentless drought, leaving the Murray-Darling river system virtually dry. Now, at last some relief has come in the form of rains. Good news, right? No worries, eh? Well, that’s as maybe, according to an article today from the British newspaper The Independent.
Australia’s Darling river is running with water again after a drought in the middle of the decade reduced it to a trickle. But the rains feeding the continent’s fourth-longest river are not the undiluted good news you might expect. For the cloudbursts also create ideal conditions for an unwelcome pest – the Australian plague locust.
The warm, wet weather that prevailed last summer meant that three generations of locusts were born, each one up to 150 times larger than the previous generation. After over-wintering beneath the ground, the first generation of 2010 is already hatching. And following the wettest August in seven years, the climate is again perfect. The juveniles will spend 20 to 25 days eating and growing, shedding their exoskeletons five times before emerging as adults, when population pressure will force them to swarm.
It is impossible to say how many billions of bugs will take wing, but many experts fear this year’s infestation could be the worst since records began – 75 years ago. All that one locust expert, Greg Sword, an associate professor at the University of Sydney, would say was: “South Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria are all going to get hammered.”
The article, titled “Australia Faces Worst Plague of Locusts in 75 Years,” predicts that the coming disaster “is expected to cost farmers billions.” Well, yeah, that it might — but what’s more important, the amount of money farmers make or the number of people who starve in the famine that is slowly strangling the planet? Hmm, I guess money and profit once again trumps human lives.
Meanwhile, the U.S. corn and soybean harvest is under way and agri-business leaders are crowing about the wonderful news of higher commodity prices. The reason: The harvest doesn’t look so good. This report today from AgWeb.com explains what’s up with that:
With an already tight carryover projected for next year, corn’s supply noose seems to tighten by the day as the market looks for news to ensure corn supply for the coming year. Soybeans are following suit as demand is increasing for that crop and it appears the market must begin to bid up acres. This is creating an “unbelievably bullish market.”
Corn carryover, projected to be the lowest since the 1995-96 marketing year before USDA’s September USDA’s Crop Production Report, looks to be the noose around the necks of grain buyers. Daily reports of lower-than-expected yields and mounting bullish demand news are combining to paint a fundamental and technical picture that will shoot corn and soybean prices considerably higher, says Jerry Gulke, Top Producer marketing analyst and president of The Gulke Group.
The title of the article, “Unbelievably Bullish Corn and Soybeans” tells the story. Yeah, bullish is good and bear markets are bad—for traders and investors. But that’s actually a load of bull because it’s crop failure that lies at the bottom of the story. And for a world in which a billion or more people are already living in the looming shadow of famine this wonderful bull market isn’t good news at all.
And as always, while grain traders profit no matter what, for the farmer it’s a crapshoot. Those who luck out and are able to harvest good yields will cash in from the high prices. Those others whose failures contribute to the shortfall … well, they’re stuck on the horns of the bull.
In the wake of disastrous drought and heat in Russia and Ukraine, wheat prices have already shot upward this year and remain at more than $7 a bushel. Now yields of corn and soybeans seem to be disappointing, too, causing the present bull stampede. Remember, too, that the harvest has a long way to go and weather problems could cause even today’s pessimistic crop outlooks to be revised downward.
None of this bodes well for world food security, and how appropriate that the coming Australian summer may bring us video clips of skies darkened by clouds of locusts descending on fields of crops. Stay tuned.
By David L. Brown
According to an article in the British newspaper The Guardian, a bidding war for a potash mining company reveals a looming problem: Finding the resources to feed a world on the brink of hunger
According to the article, which you can read here, the attempted takeover of Potash, Corp., the world’s largest source of potash, by mining giant BHP Billiton:
…lays bare the global struggle for resources on a planet struggling with water and food shortages, overpopulation and pollution. And it highlights a question that overshadows the 21st century: how to provide enough food for a global population that is set to rise from 6.8 billion to more than 9 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations.
The world is waking up to the coming era of food shortages, with governments and corporations scrambling to gain control of land, minerals, energy, and food markets. The flurry of activity is based on the further prediction by the UN that food production must be increased by 70 percent to meet the needs of the projected population of 2050.
Well, not to rain on anyone’s parade, but there are two comments I want to make.
First, it is troubling to witness global corporations lining up to make huge profits from this “opportunity”. It reminds me of war profiteering, “bad capitalism” run amok.
Second, I have to say that the chance of increasing the world’s food production by 70 percent is about as likely as a 400-lb. Hampshire sow sprouting wings and flying to the Moon. We are running out of resources folks, and our industrial agriculture is built on those very resources. Without increasing amounts of oil, gas, minerals such as potash, and fertile land itself, there is no way that we can increase production, and it would probably be a tremendous achievement even to keep it from peaking and beginning to drop.
Industrial agriculture depends upon increasing amounts of the resources it needs, and the outlook is for those resources to begin to decline just as world population continues to explode. Taking potash, the subject of this latest resource grab, as an example, here’s a graphic from Potash, Corp itself that plots demand, the gray bar, against the major world sources of the mineral.
If there was ever an example of demand running ahead of supply this is it. Demand is already running far ahead of the supplyNote that from 2008 on world production remained virtually level. That is the indication of a peak, and resource peaks are generally followed by a decline. Meantime, demand will continue to rise. Through extraordinary action production might be able to temporarily get back ion an upward path—but that’s not the point. The question is how much potash do we need to increase food production by 70 percent and, even more important, where is it going to come from? And if population continues to go up, how can harvests keep up?
Many parts of the world are already lagging in food production for want of sufficient potash. For example, here’s an excerpt from The Guardian article about the situation faced by China and other over-populated nations:
Experts say crop yields are low in many regions, partly due to the historical under-application of fertiliser in many developing countries. China has 20% of the world’s population but just 6% of its arable land – which has dwindled as Chinese industry has ruined previously fertile tracts of ground through pollution and heavy industrialisation. The Fertiliser Institute in Washington says China and India use only half as much potash on their fields as American farmers.
Many of these “developing” countries have depended upon purchases of grain and other foodstuffs. As production begins to lag in North America and elsewhere, and with grain crops being diverted to the production of ethanol and biodiesel, those imports cannot be counted upon in the future. To vastly increase domestic production in places such as China would require immense quantities of resources—which are going to be available in declining quantities and at soaring prices. The result: a global outbreak of food wars, waged by the powerful and the desperate, in which resources will be sought at almost any cost. Those wars are already taking place, as this passage from The Guardian indicates:
In Africa, the Chinese are forging mining joint ventures and investments linked to China’s hunt for resources to fuel its fast-industrialising economy. Africa is also seeing a land grab that has been likened to Europe’s carve-up of the continent at the end of the 19th century. An Observer investigation earlier this year established that 50m hectares – more than double the size of the UK – had been acquired in the last few years by foreign governments and wealthy investors with state subsidies.
Ethiopia alone has approved 815 foreign-financed agricultural schemes since 2007. Saudi Arabia is thought to be the biggest buyer as it turns to Africa to meet domestic demand, a move that helps it to conserve water at home.
Charities have complained that foreign expansion has been at the expense of African smallholders and that overseas investment exacerbates hunger as land is increasingly turned over to growing crops for export. There have also been reports of evictions without compensation, bullying and rising crime.
Some of the African deals have been eye-wateringly large: China has signed a contract with the Democratic Republic of Congo to grow 2.8m hectares of palm oil for biofuels. Before it fell apart after riots, a proposed 1.2m-hectare deal between Madagascar and South Korea’s Daewoo would have included nearly half the country’s arable land.
The ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” comes to mind. Interesting, indeed, perhaps the most interesting ever. Watch this space.
By David L. Brown
Wheat, the Staff of Life
We’ve talked here before about the fact that the world’s supply of basic foodstuffs is falling short with production barely able to meet demand. Now wheat prices are soaring due to drought in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Australia, added to excess rain in Canada that has taken 13 million acres out of production this season.
Wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade experienced a 42 percent increase just during the month of July, the biggest monthly percentage gain since the CBOT began keeping records in 1959. Wheat contracts jumped by $1.97 per bu. in July, with September futures closing on Friday the 30th at $6.615 per bu. This is not an all-time high—wheat reached the eight dollar level during the food crisis of 2008—but the end isn’t in sight and more increases are expected as bad news continues to come in about yield expectations and traders keep bidding up the price.
Now as one might expect the press reports on this story raise the specter of, well, higher prices for bread and pasta in the grocery store. Nowhere is the word “famine” mentioned in the stories I read. It’s all about us, you see, and how this might impact our family budgets., a relatively minor fact if you want to know the truth. You may remember we went through a similar period of angst two years ago when the price of wheat was a concern, with reports of rioting in Italy because pasta prices had jumped.
Let me put this in perspective. A bushel of wheat weighs 60 lbs. When wheat prices hit that $8 range in 2008, the North Dakota Wheat Commission estimated that the farm value of the wheat in a typical loaf of bread was about 20¢, up from a previous range of 12-15¢ so the actual cost of a loaf of bread represented by the wheat it contained actually rose by just 5¢ to 8¢ — hardly cause for panic. The March 14, 2008 Wheat Commission news release (read it here) concluded that the extra cost for a family that consumed one loaf of bread and one pound of pasta per week would be about $20 a year. Actually, my calculations are even lower (+8¢ per loaf or packet of pasta, times 2/week times 52 weeks equals just $8.32). This shouldn’t even be considered as news, and little more than a rounding error in family budgets.
But what’s the real story? It’s famine, because it’s not the price of wheat that matters, but the supply. The fact is that a shortfall in wheat production will mean there won’t be enough wheat to satisfy world demand. About a third of the people on our planet rely on wheat as their major foodstuff, the “Staff of Life.” Many of these people live in poor nations and must buy their grain or rely on food aid from rich nations.
The confusion with availability of food and money is a sign of our misguided emphasis on monetary factors. Clearly, when there isn’t enough food to go around, money cannot solve the problem. In other words, actual food cannot be magically transformed from the ether by the application of paper dollars from a printing press. Sadly, humans can’t even eat the money, so there’s trouble ahead for many in the poor regions of the world.
As far as we here in the comfortable West are concerned, the price of wheat will be bid up as is presently taking place until demand drops to meet supply. That occurs when some potential consumers conclude they cannot afford to buy wheat at the higher price. The first to reach that point will be the poorest of the world.
Another way that reports mislead us is by conflating percentages with actual values. Let’s imagine a worst-case scenario in which wheat rises to $20 per bu., or about four times the recent price range. Wheat will sell for 400% of its previous price. Whoa, a terrible disaster, right? Well, maybe not. Using the factor noted above where $8 wheat was equivalent to 20¢ per loaf, at $20 the farm value of the wheat in a loaf of bread would rise to 50¢. That’s a little less scary. And if a premium loaf of bread sells for $3, and other factors don’t change (they will, but never mind), then although the price of wheat will have risen by four times, the cost will add only about 16 percent to the cost of the loaf of bread.
Taking it one more step, if a family consumes one loaf of bread and one box of pasta per week, and the wheat they contain costs an extra 50¢, the cost is just $2 a week or $104 per year. That’s under a worst case assumption that is probably quite a bit higher than wheat prices are likely to reach, because the poor will be priced out of the game before prices reach that lofty height.
Prices even in the range of 2008 would be devastating to several hundred million people who depend on wheat and have few if any alternatives. And to repeat: Money cannot solve the problem; food aid agencies cannot create more food simply by throwing money at the problem. Rich nations will ante up whatever it takes to get as much wheat as their populations demand and others will be left without. For more on this point, see my essay “Money Won’t Solve Looming Famine,” posted June 2, 2009 here.
Not only that, but when the price of one commodity goes up it takes others with it as frustrated buyers seek alternatives. Thus, corn and soybean prices also rose last month, although not nearly not as much as wheat.
The specter Famine
Folks, we are reaching Peak Food, and with population continuing to rise this is an unfolding tragedy. For the press and politicians to moan and gnash their teeth over the price of bread is beside the point, which is that many people of the world will go without enough to eat. Most of those same people are already malnourished, so a wheat shortfall will push them toward outright starvation.
As resources such as oil and gas decline, famines are probably inevitable. We haven’t seen much of that ancient scourge of humanity in recent decades, but it’s fated to return, perhaps very soon. I’ll keep you posted.
By David L. Brown
Yesterday I wrote about a new report from NASA, reporting that 2010 is the hottest ever so far. To get a visual image of what that means, here’s a map from the agriculture.com web site showing the predicted high temperatures across the United States for this date, July 16.
An all-red, fiery weather forecast for today
If you think this may look like an image from Hell, you may be right. Farmers are complaining of too much rain in the Corn Belt, too little in the Southeast. To give you a feel for what some farmers are experiencing, here are excerpts from a few recent comments posted by farmers on the AgWeb.com site (you can read more farmer comments here):
7/13 – Northeast Indiana: Some are still trying to plant beans. Now we can’t buy a rain and not much in the forecast. Even the good corn is firing now, no nitrogen left to finish this crop. With shallow roots, it won’t take long to become real ugly.
7/13 – York Springs, Pa.: Our crop (beans and corn) are about shot…we have not had any rain since mid-June. Corn is 2′ tall, shooting tassel. We are hoping that the Midwest has plenty!
7/13 – Fayette County, Ill.: Finally got finished planting beans for the first time this year in the river bottom on Monday, the 5th of July. Every time I got ready to plant, it rained and stayed too wet. Lots of drowned out or very poor crops in some areas of central Illinois and some good-looking crops in well drained areas.
7/12 – South central Iowa: Our crops are the worst I have seen in all of my travels across the Midwest over this last month. It is the worst corn we have ever grown and we have been completely helpless as it rains and rains. It is pretty much a lost cause at this point.
7/9 – Coles County, east central Illinois: I walked out into my corn fields to check for gray leaf spots and found something worse: In a field that has looked good, was planted in good conditions on soybean stubble, had 210 lb. NH3 fall applied, was beautiful when I did post spraying, now when you walk in the field about 20′ you find stalks that are dead from the ear down. With all the constant rains, the corn never put down much roots and is not picking up the nitrogen. This is not just in low spots, I am finding it on hills also. It does not look like a bumper crop to me!
7/8 – Shelby County, Tenn.: National Weather Service, Memphis: It’s official, Memphis/mid-South area, June was the second hottest and fifth driest ever!
7/7 – Bucks County, Pa. (sweet corn crop): Very dry, having to pump water to keep crop looking and growing good. Temps 100° plus, pond is 4′ below normal. Working to 11 p.m. keeping sprinklers and pumps running, and there is a real fear of fire due to dry woodlands and grass. With that said, crop looks great. Hope the pond don’t dry up!
7/7 – Sussex County, Del.: Very dry here, temp over 100°. Corn crop burning up, soybeans standing still, not growing at all. Feeding cattle winter hay already. Pasture is gone, one cutting of hay, there won’t be another.
7/6 – Central Pennsylvania: Dry, dry, and dry. Only an inch of rain for the month of June, if that. Corn is curled up, and looks terrible. Only corn that looks good is on ground that holds moisture the best. If it doesn’t rain soon, well… we won’t need the chopper to come around to process our corn silage for our dairy cows, there won’t be a kernel to process, and not much stalk to chop either.
All-in-all, it’s shaping up as another difficult year for farmers, with Goldilocks conditions of flooding and drought and excessive heat added on top of that. We’ll stay abreast of the situation as we move into the critical late-July and August growing season, when the worst heat stress usually occurs.