Climate and Ag in the news
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This week there have been a number of stories on attitudes about climate change and global warming in the news. Since many of you communicate about weather and climate impacts on agriculture to people with a broad variety of perspectives, I wanted to point out some stories that might be helpful in setting the debate…
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Recently NASA released a mesmerizing video of the movement of aerosols around the globe. You can watch the video and read a brief description here at onEarth.org. Aerosols can occur naturally (sea salt particles, pollen) but many are caused by burning of forests or output from manufacturing. On the video you can see how aerosols move…
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Slate magazine’s website had an ominous article today about the drought in California, which has gotten even worse in recent weeks after a wet start to the winter. Last year California’s temperature was more than 2 degrees higher than the previous record due in part to the drought, and this month some parts of the…
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A recent article on Craftsmanship.net describes the work that is being done by California ranchers to improve carbon storage in the soil of his pastures using judicious application of compost to the land. This has often been discussed but no carefully calibrated studies to determine the effectiveness of the treatment have been performed. If the…
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One of the two USDA projects I am involved in (and who help sponsor this blog), Animal Agriculture in a Changing Climate, has a blog called “Considering Climate”. David Schmidt, the blog’s author, published a short commentary today by Dr. Larry Jacobson, one of the project leaders, on some insights he had while attending a…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
The strong storm that has affected the northeastern US this week has caused minimal problems for most dairy farmers in that region. Forecasts of the storm ahead of time allowed milk producers and haulers to reroute their trucks around the areas with the worst hazards, and the few dairies that experienced power problems had generators…
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The Modern Farmer had a fascinating article this week on the production of tea in Turkey. According to the article, the people of Turkey consume more tea per capita than any other country in the world. To provide all this tea, Turkey started growing tea along the eastern shore of the Black Sea, and it…