Climate and Ag in the news
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The Packer published a heartbreaking video from the Texas Farm Bureau this week which showed some of the destruction of vegetable and citrus crops in Texas due to last month’s frigid temperatures. Losses are estimated to be at least $600 million, although could be more since they don’t know yet if the citrus trees will…
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The University of Georgia CAES News Team posted a story this week on some recent research showing that cows that are kept free of heat stress produce more milk and enjoy a better quality of life. Cows can be kept more comfortable by a combination of misters and fans, which keep the heat stress low…
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Earlier this week, the USDA released a new soil moisture tool that is powered by NASA satellite data. The Crop Condition and Soil Moisture Analytics (Crop-CASMA) app provides access to high-resolution data from NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument. It will help researchers, meteorologists and farmers…
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All of the rain that has fallen in southeast Georgia in the last month has caused problems for onion farmers. The wet conditions have contributed to problems with fungal diseases, especially as the weather has warmed up. In spite of the problems, overall the crop looks good, according to growers there, but they need to…
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In addition to this blog, I am now also contributing to The Garden Professors once a month. Here is a past article by John Porter of Nebraska from their blog which describes why starting seeds at their optimal temperature is so important. While the article discusses this in terms of the home gardener who is…
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Here is a thoughtful article about changes that foresters are seeing in some of the forests around the world that have been decimated by wildfires. In a number of places, after a fire comes through, there is no regrowth of trees even after a number of years. This has been attributed to changes in the…
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There have been a lot of stories about climate in the news this week. Here are a sprinkling of the most interesting ones. Science: Butterflies are vanishing in the western U.S.—but not for the reasons scientists thought CBS News: Humans, not nature, may be changing Atlantic hurricane cycles Yale Climate Connections: U.S. dams, levees get…