Cosmos Magazine has a long and interesting article about the importance of terroir in wine-making. That term is hard to describe exactly, but encompasses the local conditions under which a wine is made, including the particular soil qualities, the micro-climate, and even the type of microbes in the area, which can…
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Usually when I think of climate and agriculture I think of how climate and weather affect crop growth. But AgWeb posted a story this week that turns the usual order on its head. They reported (link) that the Iowa Department of Transportation is paying about 70 farmers to keep several…
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An article by from scientists from the Southeast Climate Consortium (which helps support this blog) in Nature shows that rising temperatures around the globe have warming are “already slowing yield gains at a majority of wheat-growing locations. Global wheat production is estimated to fall by 6% for each °C of…
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The Packer published an article this week saying that strawberries from Florida were running about a week behind normal. They attributed it to cooler than normal evening temperatures early in the season. This is expected to result in a decrease in volumes for the next couple of weeks due to…
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There have been several recent news articles discussing the effect of bad weather and climate conditions on crops. Here are a couple of the more interesting ones. AgWeb published an article today discussing the poor barley crop that has been produced this year. Much of the crop has been moved…
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Many of you will be traveling sometime during the next week to visit friends or relatives over Christmas week. Looks like there will be a good bit of storminess this week over the eastern half of the country as well as a big storm hitting the Pacific Northwest. Pay special…
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Clint Thompson of UGA published an article this week in Growing Georgia which notes the unusually large losses in tobacco this year due to black shank disease. He said that losses were between 4 and 5 percent of the state’s 12,000-plus tobacco acres. The heaviest losses were in Coffee and…
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