Crops
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Vegetable and Specialty Crop News posted an interesting story this week on the growth of the carrot industry in northeast Florida in recent years as producers are looking for new crops to grow. According to the story, the total number of acres produced in Florida is around 5,000 acres, which is small compared to bigger…
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A lone female fungus-farming beetle inadvertently imported to Georgia may have been the source of a disease that has killed some 300 million redbay trees and threatens Florida’s avocado groves, researchers from Mississippi and Florida say in an article published in Online Athens. The ambrosia beetle has reproduced across many parts of the US, destroying…
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Growing Georgia posted a story this week on the impacts of the wet weather we have been having in the Southeast on forage conditions. The damp conditions have fostered the growth of mold in some forage and farmers need to check it carefully before feeding it to their livestock, since the presence of mold can…
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This outlook will be posted in the Peanut Pointers newsletter but I thought other producers might also find it useful: Drought is almost entirely gone from the Southeastern US, with only a tiny sliver remaining in northeast Georgia. I expect that to be eliminated in the Drought Monitor map released on July 6, along with…
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Sometimes it takes me a while to find an interesting story. This 2015 story on dry beans from Modern Farmer discusses a cross between common beans like white or kidney and the tepary bean. The tepary bean is much less sensitive to hot temperatures than the common beans, and the crosses looks like they will…
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A new study released this week indicates that the American South will feel the worst economic effects of a warming climate. Articles in The Atlantic here and in the New York Times here describe the results of the study published today in Science which use a new economic method of calculating economic costs by calculating…
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One of the consequences of the rainy conditions in the central US this year has been exceptional runoff of fertilizer and other agricultural chemicals as well as animal waste, most of which make their way down the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico. These chemicals help lead to the development of a “dead zone”…