Crops
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According to The Packer, “U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has signed a declaration of disaster for areas in Georgia and Florida for crops affected by a mid-March freeze. The declaration enables growers in affected counties to apply for low-interest loans to help them recover from crop losses.” Many areas of Georgia lost 75% or more…
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The latest blog post from Steve Hilberg of CoCoRaHS discusses the heavy rain that has fallen in the Midwest, hindering farmers there who are trying to plant their summer crops as well as causing damage to infrastructure around the area. You can read it at https://cocorahs.blogspot.com/2017/05/april-showers-bring-some-flowers-and.html.
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Here’s an interesting story from Eos about unexpected changes in regional climate due to human intervention. In this story, it’s the change from using horses to draw farm equipment to mechanized tractors which caused the change. Horses eat oats, and the reduction in the number of horses used in farm work allowed farmers to switch…
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A late-season blizzard last weekend has caused tremendous problems for farmers in Oklahoma and Kansas. According to a story this week in AgWeb, thousands of cattle have died in the storm and many others are starving because of lack of access to food. The story notes that “As much as 75 percent of the U.S.…
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Lee Shearer of the Athens Banner-Herald posted an interesting story today about land use changes across Georgia in the past few decades. Climatologists know that changes in land from bare group crops to forests can cause changes in the local climate because of how it changes the energy balance. Similarly, changing land from fields to…
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Sammy Fretwell of The State has published two related stories this week on the growth of very large farms which are replacing forests in South Carolina. In one article it says that “In the past four years, out-of-state agribusinesses have purchased nearly 10,000 acres in the Edisto River basin, chopped down forests and established mega…
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Last week a group of water experts from around the State of Georgia gathered together in Athens GA to discuss results of their research on water availability in the Southeast at the biennial Georgia Water Resources Conference. Lee Shearer of the Athens Banner-Herald wrote an article this week describing some of the information presented there.…