Climate and Ag in the news
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UPDATE: Summary and video are found here. Each month I participate along with several others in the Southeast Climate Monthly Webinar, which features an update on climate conditions around the region along with an outlook for the future conditions or another topic of special interest. This week Tuesday March 28 I am especially looking forward…
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I had the chance to visit the University of Georgia test plots at Bledsoe Farm just outside of Griffin GA this week. The test plots were composed of a variety of wheat, oats, and triticale varieties to see how they did under different planting dates, densities, and cuttings. Many of the plots looked quite good…
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Every year in the ENSO blog, NOAA climate forecasters look back at the prediction for last season and discuss how good it was. This keeps them honest and shows that this year, the prediction was quite good, especially for the Southeast. As usual, temperature is easier to predict and get correct than precipitation, and that…
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In case you did not know it, yesterday (March 21, 2023) was National Ag Day, a day when we celebrate all those who work in agriculture. You can read more about the day at https://www.agday.org/ as well as see photos of events in Washington DC yesterday. You can also read a story about it in…
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Here in the Southeast US, we aren’t really thinking about tropical storms at this time of year, but in other parts of the world, they can occur in almost any month of the year. This year, Tropical Cyclone Freddy started as a tropical storm in the eastern Indian Ocean on February 6 and moved westward…
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Atmospheric rivers have brought prodigious amounts of rain and snow to California’s coast this winter. The rainfall has reduced drought levels significantly and refilled drastically shrunken reservoirs. Some farmers have been able to help recharge groundwater by flooding their fields with the excess runoff, which will help production later this year and in subsequent seasons.…
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Here is an interesting story from AZCentral that describes how one Arizona farmer is growing wheat and other crops in the desert by careful use of water combined with regenerative agriculture, a process of rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity through cover crops and other conservative methods. By growing his crop organically,…