Climate and Ag in the news
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Farmers have always been strong defenders of their land, and are always searching for new ways to earn income to support their farms and their families. Now there are new ways to farm in ways that improve their soil and cut the use of chemicals and water and also help improve the earth’s climate by…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
Combining agriculture with other activities is not new for farmers, but the combination of producing solar energy and grazing livestock is relatively recent. As Modern Farmer points out, land that has solar panels on it is often ideal for cattle and sheep. In fact, if the panels are elevated, they can use the shade from…
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If you’re a dairy farmer, feeding leftovers or scraps to cows is nothing new. As long as you keep their diets well balanced, cows can eat a surprising variety of things and stay healthy. But feeding leftovers to cattle also provides another benefit–it reduces food waste, one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.…
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For those of you who are looking towards June 1 as the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, you might be interested in this refresher on hurricane climatology in the region from Alicia Wasula of Shade Tree Meteorology here. Next week is the NWS Atlanta Hurricane Preparedness Week, and they will be posting information about…
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Today, NOAA released their new climate normals for the 1991-2020 period. These 30-year averages replaced the old normals that covered the period from 1981-2010. This is done every ten years to provide a consistent period of time for use in comparing monthly and annual climate information. There have been a number of news stories about…
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On Tuesday, May 4, NOAA will released the long-anticipated 30-year normals for temperature, precipitation, degree days, and several other variables. These values are updated once every ten years and will cover the period 1991-2020. The previous set of normals was based on 1981-2010. Because of the rising temperature in the US and across the globe,…
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Severe drought causes significant impacts for farmers across the world. Here is a story from Yahoo News on the lengthy drought in Turkey and how desperate farmers overusing irrigation are causing sinkholes to develop in their fields as they remove the groundwater. Not so different than the overuse of groundwater in California except that in…