Harvest worries mean little reason to be festive
Randy Kron, a farmer in Griffin, Ind., on land that was a cornfield, then a soybean field, but that is now flooded.
The New York Times has a new article in it’s Food Chain series. This one is on harvest expectations, not just in the US but elsewhere.
Considerable hope is riding on good harvests in 2008, but this may not be the case as discussed in the article.
In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.
American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.
Later the article notes:-
As the world clamors for more corn, wheat, soybeans and rice, farmers are trying to meet the challenge. Millions of acres are coming back into production in Europe. In Asia, planting two or three crops in a single year is becoming more common.
There is scope with improved farming practices to meet the challenge but other issues have to be faced also. There would appear likely to be a fall off in US rice production as well.
The article discusses also the challenges facing rice growers in Thailand and the Philippines.
Weather conditions are not helping either, the drought in Australia and:-
China also faces trouble: the agriculture ministry issued an urgent notice to wheat and rice farmers in southern China on Sunday, telling them to harvest as much of their crop as possible immediately in the face of unseasonable torrential rains expected to rake the region for the next 10 days.
In the American corn belt, the issue has also been getting the rain to stop. After heavy rains and flooding last weekend, the price of corn on the commodity markets rose Monday to a record $6.57 a bushel.
The article concludes:-
Mr. Kron, the Indiana farmer, gave up on corn last week after managing to plant — and in some cases replant — only about half of his 1,200 acres.
Last year, his corn yielded 150 bushels an acre. This year, he will be happy to get 130 bushels. He has warned his processor, Azteca Milling, which makes flour for tortillas and chips, that he will be short.
Mr. Kron’s prospects are deteriorating. He was hoping to plant soybeans on some of his unused corn ground, but hundreds of those acres adjoin the swollen Wabash River. On Monday, the fields started flooding.
So food supply problems appear likely to continue.
“I don’t know if this is the worst year we’ve ever had, but it’s moving up the list pretty quick,” the farmer said.
opps! wrong thread
Four pages of it?!
I don’t think I can manage that much anymore, perhaps later, if I find time…
The way we think has changed over time, exposure to the written word, TV, computer games, all alter how we handle information in that our brains adapt to maximise our efficiency in processing our primary sources of information whatever thier nature. The internet has made us less patient with the book which tends to use more literary style which dilutes the actual information.
Similarly, have you noticed how older books, and older movies are slow? How do you think people raised in the modern world would handle the pace of life in a primitive village?
This process of increasing the information density of the environment is (I believe) the principle cause of an interesting phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect