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Did you know that bananas are one of the biggest monocultures that exist in agriculture? Almost every banana we see in the grocery store is a clone of the Cavendish banana, which has disease resistance and good traveling qualities that make it profitable for banana farmers. But now a new disease called “Fusarium Oxysporum Tropical Race…
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The US Environmental Protection Agency released a new report recently which describes the impacts of global warming on agriculture, drought, ecosystems and water supplies, among other sectors. The report describes the effects of “business as usual” climate scenarios compared to a mitigation-based approach where greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. There are a number of sections…
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Bob Kemerait, a specialist at the University of Georgia in agriculture, recently published an article in Southeast Farm Press on dealing with heat after nearly experiencing a heat stroke while doing corn fungicide research in very hot conditions. In the article he muses on how increased warming might affect agriculture in the Southeast in the…
Posted in: Climate and Ag in the news -
NOAA released their monthly climate summary for June 2015 earlier this week. You can read the summary report at https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201506. The data show that June 2015 was the warmest on record (since official records began in 1880) for the globe as a whole, although some areas were cooler than average. The first six months of 2015…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
I’ve been out of the country for most of the last two weeks, so was eager to see how the climate for July has fallen out so far. Based on the maps from the High Plains Regional Climate Center, it looks like most of the Southeast has been 1-2 degrees warmer than normal. Rainfall has…
Posted in: Climate summaries -
The Southeast Farm Press released a report earlier this month describing a new variety of cattle produced by the University of Florida Range Cattle REC. The Ona White Angus was developed over two decades of cross-breeding and are similar in meat quality to Black Angus but have white hair with black skin. This will make…
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Earlier this month, the blog Carbon Brief published the results of a study asking climatologists which research paper was the most influential in the study of climate. The winner of the study was a 1967 paper by Syukuro Manabe and Richard. T. Wetherald, published in the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences entitled ” Thermal Equilibrium of the atmosphere…