In NYT @MarkHertsgaard dissects GOP farm bill with greenhouse warming in mind. (Art by Joanna Neborsky)
Great night of Breakneck Ridge boogie and trad tunes at the Glynwood Center barn gala.
One hurricane won’t end drought (or save scorched crops). But #Isaac inland drenching surely good news. Rain map below, drought map above.
Another reason to love @BigPictureAg: Great guest post on drought from p.o.v. of parched Iowa farm. Excerpt:
With the corn crop currently denting, and thus “fixed” (more rain would not now improve yields), all attention turned to soybeans. Beans have a resilient character to them, with the capacity to shed blossoms until growing conditions “are right.” Having lost much of the corn crop, our neighbors are busy reassuring each other that “the bean crop is made in August”—but only if rains arrive. Unfortunately, there is little moisture predicted in the medium-term forecasts.
Worst hit of all have been the livestock producers. Pastures are toast, and watering holes and rivers are drying up…. THE REST
On Landsat 40th anniversary, neat NASA slideshow of before/after imagery. Here, the spread of central-pivot irrigation in Kansas (bye bye Ogallala aquifer?).
Here’s a musical portrait of the dry conditions that occasionally beset farmers in America’s heartland, including this summer. The classic Son House blues tune is combined with footage from the film “The Plow that Broke the Plains.” The performance, recorded at the Philipstown Depot Theatre in 2005, is by the Hudson Valley band Uncle Wade, which then consisted of Andy Revkin, Art Labriola, Jerry Krenach and Peter Rundquist.
For more on America’s drought history, visit this NOAA Web site.
PNAS paper linking climate-driven crop failures to Mexico-US migration rate created buzz, now challenged in same journal.
"Food production has not only kept pace with population growth, it has outstripped it. The world now produces more food than ever, and even countries that were once practically synonymous with famine have achieved self-sufficiency in staple foods. As we argued in this post, hunger is a problem of poverty, not scarcity."
— OECD/FAO, via Roger Pielke Jr.
