Journal zogger's Journal: Spring floods might result in lower crop yields this year 11
Boy howdy I can relate to this scenario, floods turning fields into lakes.
They don't know yet if it will be as bad as last year, but it might, and a lot of those guys are hurting financially because of lower yield and stock losses last year. You just can't have too many back to back bad years, because most modern big farms run on a yearly credit, they borrow huge sums, then hope for the best and make enough to pay the bills deal. The only thing that saved my @$$ets this winter is we had enough hay stockpiled in the barn to let us ride through not being able to hay last fall because it was just too dang sloppy muddy wet, and it's been wet all winter, it's soaking wet now, and we got two days of rain coming starting this weekend. And what they say in the article is true, this effects beyond row crops, about spring calving and the ground being too wet and cold, sometimes the little guys don't make it. A wildcard there, ya never know.
Time to plant onions or rice (Score:2)
Anyway, that's what the farmers in the floodplains in the Willamette Valley do- seems to me if we could get white people to eat Wapato it would also be a good crop for such conditions ('cept they've never found a non-labor-intensive way to harvest it).
Minnesota (Score:2)
Lucky for us that states like Illinois, California, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, etc etc aren't having those problem. Really sucks for Minnesota farmers, though. But the only people it will affect is people in the flooded areas, and floods always bring hardship.
Now this was a flood! [wikipedia.org]
Aye (Score:1)
That was a flood
Here is the noaa spring flood forecast nationwide, the map, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/images/floodmap.jpg [noaa.gov] works better than a lot of text. Looks fair to middling extensive to me, of course not near as bad as that whopper you linked to
Today's noaa press release for the spring outlook in general
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20090319_springoutlook.html [noaa.gov]
Re: (Score:1)
You're not as lucky as you think -- California is having the opposite of that problem: Drought plus asshole Leftist enviro-wackos getting a fellow asshole Leftist enviro-wacko judge to turn off water from the north that grows the crops in the central valley. So whether the disaster is "man-made" (like the wackos would attribute this flooding to prolly Anthropogenic Climate Change nee Global Warming nee a coming ice age) or literally man-made in this case, either way it means food is not produced, and we'll
Re: (Score:1)
Desalinate!!
I believe the enviros are against that as well -- like maybe altering the pH of the ocean for all the poor sea kittens [peta.org] or something. Who can really guess how enviros will be against something, just that they will if it means increasing or maintaining quality of life for teh evil human species.
Or harvest the rainwater that falls on the oceans.
We can't even drill for oil off-shore, no way the rich hypocrite Lefties who live along the coast will allow any kind of collection devices to spoil their o
Re: (Score:2)
It takes a special kind of idiot to try to farm in a desert. The "envirowhackos" are right; you're taking water from the people who were smart enough to realise that farming in the desert is stupid and piping water to the desert is equally stupid.
not necessarily (Score:1)
It wouldn't be as bad if we introduced a national water plan along the lines of the national highway plan. We need 1,000 more (some big number) reservoirs and pipelines and canals, etc to shift flood prone areas water to drought prone areas. It most likely could be done with windcharger power for the most part, and also using the hydropower potential the dams for the reservoirs would create. We have plenty of water, just need a better way for people to access it. This would also help eliminate taking underg
Re: (Score:1)
I'd prolly quibble with creating a "national plan" (i.e. federal mandates (often "unfunded") and the typical one-size-fits-all approach that comes from single centralized administration and control from far away from the issues and the real world), but I agree in general. Despite the security risk of linking our water supplies nation-wide, there's definitely a need to be able to move water around like we do electricity. (Unfortunately it will never move as fast!) There's no reason a river should flood and d
Wet (Score:1)
We haven't seen wet yet.
Rained earlier this month - and got a months worth in a week or so
No Tropical Cyclone Ului is about to make landfall a bit farther north
http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDG00074.shtml [bom.gov.au]
Gonna get a whole let wetter as it is a big system
But the farmers are loving it.