Crops
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I was surprised to read today that NASA is experimenting with growing potatoes in a simulated Martian environment in Lima, Peru. If humans are ever going to colonize Mars, they need to find a crop that can grow in the harsh conditions there. Why potatoes? According to the story in Popular Science, “As Scientific American…
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Yahoo News published an article a few days ago on the importance of research on identifying new plants and seeds when dealing with land changes like droughts, forest fires, and changes in local climate. Restoration of the land will provide a home for native species and can also provide food for livestock. In the article…
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Last weekend I pointed out that Fiji was about to take a direct hit from strong tropical cyclone Winston. NOAA’s Climate blog has a post-storm analysis of Winston at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/tropical-cyclone-winston-causes-devastation-fiji-tropical-paradise. According to Investment Fiji, “Agriculture (is) the mainstay of Fiji’s economy, and contributes around 28% to total employment in the formal sector, indirectly employing many more.…
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Modern Farmer published an interesting short article last week about how early agricultural practices changed the local and global climate. Slash and burn techniques caused big changes in land use and injected a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, both as carbon dioxide and as black soot, both of which change the climate in different…
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The Packer reported this week that rain and cold weather in Florida and up north has reduced the supplies of cabbage at a bad time for St. Patrick’s Day, coming up in mid-March. You can read the story at https://www.thepacker.com/news/rain-cold-cut-st-pat%E2%80%99s-cabbage-supplies. They reported separately that “A wild mix of cold, hot and wet weather continued to wreak…
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Chocolate is one of my favorite food groups. NOAA put out an article this week on how changes in climate are expected to affect the availability of cacao beans, the prime ingredient in chocolate. Perfect timing for Valentine’s Day! Surprisingly, it is not the increase in heat that will hurt the beans, but the lack…
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BBC News published a news story this weekend discussing the likely changes we are likely to see in US agriculture if warming trends continue. The story was based on a recently published study of how extreme events like the Dust Bowl of the 1930s would affect agriculture if it happened in a warmer climate in…