I just finished reading an excellent book by a Virginia farmer, that scared the crap out of me.
Posted on 09/22/2007 6:45:35 AM PDT by shrinkermd
Until the middle of the 1900s, much of our country’s food and fiber was produced east of the Mississippi River. Maine led the nation in potato production in 1940, and New York wasn’t far behind. The South, including Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, dominated cotton. Large amounts of corn were grown in almost every state for consumption by the local livestock and poultry. Regional vegetable markets, especially in the mid-Atlantic states, served the population centers of the East.
By 1980, Western irrigation and improvements in transportation had largely destroyed this Eastern system of agriculture. Irrigated cotton in Arizona, California and Texas displaced the cotton economy of the Deep South. Idaho and Washington became the nation’s major potato producers. Corn production became more concentrated in the Midwest.
Through irrigation, Western farmers were spared the occasional droughts that had plagued Eastern farmers, but the specialized Western system came with a price. Water projects dried up the area’s rivers. Salmon runs disappeared. Soils were poisoned from the salt in irrigated water that is left behind after evaporation.
Returning agricultural production to the Eastern United States under irrigation would be efficient and environmentally sound. In the West, at least three to four feet of water per acre is needed every year to produce a good crop. In the East, only a few inches of irrigated water per acre are needed, because of the region’s heavier rainfall. Even in a dry year for the East, about a foot of water per acre will suffice.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
**Richard T. McNider and John R. Christy are professors of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.**
What the hell do they know about farming?
You finally asked *the* question that needed asking.
I farm an irrigated section in Nevada. In Nevada, we grow some of the best hay in the world here. It isn’t just the land - it is our climate. Hot days and cool nights result in forages putting on lots of growth with less fiber.
You can grow alfalfa just about anywhere in the west. They grow lots of it in California. But when their nights heat up in April, they get lots more fiber in their hay than we get. Dairy farmers know that milk production is maximized when they can get more alfalfa protein into a milk cow with less fiber to fill her up.
So they pay a premium to haul low-fiber alfalfa hay out of Nevada into California, rather than suffer a milk production decline by feeding alfalfa grown locally. There’s a whole lot of irrigation and diesel fuel expended growing hay 500 miles from the dairy in the west, and even more diesel fuel used to ship the hay to the dairy. All that CO2 — to maximize milk production.
Maximizing milk production from a single cow means that you need fewer cows to produce the same milk. If you look at the NASS, you see that milk production per cow has been on an upward trend for years as better research into animal science and genetics maximizes the milk we get out of one cow.
Poorer-quality local feed means less diesel fuel burned... but means more cows for the same amount of milk. So we’d trade off CO2 for methane production. Oh, and cow poop. Lots more cow poop. Which produces more methane.
So... would be be putting out more or less satanic warming gases by using locally produce forage?
These are the sorts of things that most non-farming people, including professors of atmospheric science, don’t know.
You’re spot-on. Too many eastern farms are composed of smaller chunks of land.
With inflation since the 70’s, today’s farmer has to farm at least 2,000 acres of most row-crop commodities to support one family.
In the 60’s, the farm needed to be only about 400 to 600 acres to support a family.
To farm 2,000 acres or more, you need some huge machinery and big implements to reduce labor costs. Big machinery makes BIG noise. (I love the sound of howling diesels, but that’s just me, I’m a farmer).
Neighbors of farmers running equipment don’t like farmers. Or their equipment. Or the dust, spray rigs (or spray planes), etc, etc, etc.
Out here in the west, we have fewer idiot neighbors next to farms, as well as larger contiguous farms.
For the most part it's good for growing tourists.
What the farmer has done is rotate property taxes forward to any future owner when it comes to his marginal land.
We were checking out land in Bartholomew County, Indiana. We discovered that ANY piece of land on a 1 degree or greater slope was part of a Conservation District and didn't pay property taxes.
There's some lawyer in Columbus who can churn the easements out like crazy, and has done so.
True. You can add Indiana and Illinois as well. All largely agricultural states.
My guess is that this is a solution in search of a problem--which will evolve by itself through market forces.
Meanwhile, its a miracle that we still have folks with five acres to plant corn on here in Central New Jersey.
cotton should be removed from arizona and california because it is water intensive.
we need the water for other uses.
There is a lot of land lying fallow, and as someone has observed, even returning to forest. In my work I drive around much of Northeast Ohio, which most people would consider an industrial area, but all I see is countryside-- and much of it not being farmed, although it has been in the past and could easily be again. I expect it is not atypical of much of the Eastern US, at least away from the seaboard.
The authors btw are "climate scientists" from Alabama, not NY.
Last figures I saw on family farms, admittedly a few years back, showed that about two thirds were debt-free and profitable. These authors emphasize the water issue(being "climate scientists") but as transportation and other energy costs increase, more local ag production will become progressively more profitable.
The biggest problem right now is that it is more profitable for farmers to sell their land to real estate developers than to farm it. But that seems to me to be a situation the market may correct. If Amish can prosper using 19th century equipment and methods,( they can and do), I would say there is a bright future for smaller farms in the eastern US.
Why does a gallon of milk cost the consumer 40 to 50% more than a gallon of gasoline?
Uh, serious question or are you just spoofin’ me?
I just finished reading an excellent book by a Virginia farmer, that scared the crap out of me.
One thing the Northeast has along with their disasterous liberal high regulation governments, collapsed economies and solidly Blue political color is WATER. If the libs can find a way to help farmers instead of punishing them the Noretheast could indeed once again become a breadbasket economy.
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