Crops
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In my Facebook feed this morning I read a story from the Washington Post about the growing shortage of chocolate, mainly due to increases in demand from China and other places and also increased demand for dark chocolate, which uses more cocoa, but also due to dry weather in West Africa, specifically Ghana and the Ivory…
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Soil quality is a key factor in plant productivity in agriculture. Every good farmer tries to preserve or improve their soil to assure healthy crops and good yields in the future. In fact, 2015 will be the International Year of Soils and December 5 of this year World Soil Day. I’ve run across several articles…
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In honor of Halloween today, I am posting a link to a blog which describes the impacts of various types of climate conditions on pumpkin production. You can find it here from Earth Gauge. If conditions are cool and wet, mildew can reduce the yields or rot the pumpkins on the ground. If conditions are…
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The Packer printed a story on October 16 describing negative impacts of heavy rain in Florida on fresh tomato availability, in a story available here. Volumes will be down for a few weeks due to losses in Florida and in Baja California, where hurricane-related storms followed by heat and more rain knocked down plantings and…
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The Packer noted earlier this week that Chile has suffered some unseasonably cold weather, which has caused damage to blueberries as well as potentially to their other crops of apples, kiwifruit and cherries. However, the extent of the damage is uncertain, since reports have come in from only a few growers so far. The Packer…
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On Tuesday the USDA announced a new Farm Bill initiative to assist agricultural producers with losses from severe weather, including drought, according to Growing Georgia. They report “The Actual Production History (APH) Yield Exclusion, available nationwide for farmers of select crops starting next spring, allows eligible producers who have been hit with severe weather to…
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Bloomberg Businessweek had an interesting article in the past few days about the reduction in wild apple forests in Kazakhstan due to illegal development of vacation homes as well as drought and increased disease pressure linked in part to changing climate. Kazakhstan is home to what some consider the birthplace of many modern crops like…