Damn! .. Drought diminishes mighty Mississippi, puts heat on Congress
bit .. FOOD AND FIRES
In Washington, temperatures boiled on both sides of the aisle. A new five-year, $491 billion farm bill is stalled in the House on concerns there are not enough votes in the Republican-controlled chamber to pass a bill.
"We're seeing all across the country dried-up, parched land," said Senate Agriculture Committee chairwoman Debbie Stabenow. "This is a very serious issue for our farmers and ranchers, so we need a farm bill."
The farm bill has been attacked by Democrats for cutting too much from food stamps for the poor and by Republicans for doing too little to reform farm subsidies.
There is little more than a week before Congress moves to a recess that lasts until September 10. Democrats have lambasted Republicans for lack of action ahead of the November elections.
"If they actually try to do disaster next week, it's just to inoculate members for the month of August," said Ferd Hoefner, a small-farm activist. "We want the real bill and we want it this year."
Scattered rains in the Midwest this week have come too late for many crops, government drought specialists said, and the worst drought conditions since 1956 worsened over the last week.
""I'd like to see every one of the senators and congressmen go out into one of these widespread, drought-stricken areas and spend a day," said Eggerling, 44, of Martell, Neb. "Walk around and see the effects of what's going on. Look at the local economies and see what's going to happen to them. Then they can go back to Washington with a real perspective and say, 'Hey; we need to do something.'""
[...]
"The White House announced last week that the federal government will buy up to $170 million worth of pork and other meat for food assistance programs in an effort to help drought-stricken farmers. The Defense Department also was expected to encourage its vendors to speed up meat purchases in an effort to prop up prices with a glut on the market expected in the next few months."
[...]
The Obama administration also has offered low-interest emergency loans, opened federal land for grazing and distributed $30 million to get water to livestock. Farmers say they'll take what help they can get, but emergency loans come with a tangle of red tape and aren't available to everyone. Water is appreciated, but animals need to eat, and even with grazing on some federal land, hay is in short supply.
The House approved $383 million in disaster relief earlier this month, but Congress went home before the Senate acted on the bill. The Senate had previously passed a disaster aid package as part of a five-year farm bill, but GOP leaders in the House refused to bring that to a vote because many Republicans object to the nearly $80 billion included for the food stamp program."
These are just some of the new normals for farmers around the world, said Jonathan Foley .. http://environment.umn.edu/about/ione_bios/jon_foley.html .., director of the Institute for the Environment at the University of Minnesota. We spoke with Foley at the Aspen Environment Forum .. http://www.aspenenvironment.org/ .. this summer about what these changes in climate have meant for farmers.
Merlin Friesen's grass-finished herd in a more typical "green" spring in 2011. Photo by Merlin Friesen.
Merlin Friesen from Filley, Neb.:
The dramatically warm winter and early spring was unprecedented. Then, the moderately dry winter turned into a severely dry spring, which many old-timers around here say they've never witnessed. Spring rains are a mainstay of farming around here, and we've had no significant rain for over 6 weeks, coupled with higher than normal temperatures. At this time, our pastures have quit growing, and we are struggling to irrigate the market garden adequately. And the hot, dry weather has so far severely curtailed production of strawberries, lettuce, beets, onions, garlic, and sweet corn. I fear that these increasingly severe dry periods may make it difficult to raise vegetables in our area. Irrigation does not fully replace the cool moist conditions that vegetable crops thrive in. Also, we will be forced to sell about 1/2 of the breeding stock in our beef herd in the next few weeks, due to vanishing pasture.
Ariel Russell from Glen Ellen, Cali.:
The weather has become completely erratic: late frosts, cold summer nights (10 degrees colder than in the past), cool summer days, warm winters, rain in late spring and not in the heart of winter, early rain, wind all the time, more weather disturbances in the summer. The high-value, summer season crops that comprise the bulk of our income simply don't grow consistently or healthily. Throughout the last three years, we have seen a marked increase in blights and fungus due to cold, damp weather and have lost entire crops of tomatoes, peppers, melons and squash. The weather has shortened our productive season so much that we don't know how much longer we can afford to farm.
Lynda Hopkins from Healdsburg, Cali.:
My husband grew up on the property where we farm so he's very familiar with long-term weather patterns. Growing up, he was used to long, hot, dry summers -- tomato, pepper, and eggplant weather. However, the only "classic Sonoma County" summer we've had was our first one five seasons ago. Since then, late, cool, wet springs and foggy midsummer mornings have prevailed. Then again, this summer has been essentially horrible for growing crops of any variety. It has swung between extremes of cold and hot -- within the course of one week, we experienced a temperature spike to 107 and then a cool, drizzly day in the 50s and 60s. Our brassica crops (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) have been 1/3 the size they normally would be. Instead of nice, big heads of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, we have miniatures -- meaning our yield is down considerably. And yet, due to the cool weather, we're not as far along as we would have been (with respect to ripening) had we experienced a simply hot summer. Germination has also been tricky, and we had one of the worst germination rates ever on our winter squash field -- perhaps due to the soil temperature swinging from hot (i.e. good for germinating squash) to cold.
Ed Staude owns a vineyard outside of St. Louis, Mo.:
Earlier warm weather has pushed harvest up into the late summer instead of fall, [which can] really affect the wines we produce from those grapes. We have also had some unseasonably warm temperatures cause blossoming only to have the blossoms destroyed by a return to deep cold. In 2007 we lost our entire crop to that sort of phenomena. With grapes our biggest problem is mold and fungus. Cool wet springs with wildly varying temperatures have placed bigger than ever demands on growers to use spray fungicides in order to keep the grapes from being affected.
In 2011 a heavy snowfall caused Rob Maddox's barn to collapse. The damage cost him $15,000. Photo by Rob Maddox.
Rob Maddox grows organic produce in Bethlehem, Conn.:
[In 2011] we had record snow that caused a barn to collapse. Then we had record rain that decreased our potato crop and tomato crop by half. This year has now started with a dry spell and up until last week [we] were watering every day. It cost $15,000 to clean up the barn that collapsed. I lost over $10,000 in crop failures in 2011.
Maddox added over the phone that increased moisture at the end of this summer has led to a blight on his tomato crop.
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