Posted on 11/05/2009 6:19:50 AM PST by blam
Crops Headed For A Tough Harvest
by: Jim Delaney
November 03, 2009
Although it appears the prospects for the producers of porcine products have prettied, yes, lipstick included, that cannot be said for all of the ‘ole MacDonald’s in the country.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported recently that due to a late planting season and a cooler and wetter fall than normal, only 20% of the corn crop is out of the fields vs. an average of 58% during the years of 2004-2008.
“It’s getting scarier. The longer we go, the more mold keeps growing and the more ears fall off. Every day you wait, you lose more money,” said Larry Thorndyke, a farmer with 1,400 acres in Piper City, Illinois who usually has all of his corn in the bin by Halloween.
Additionally, only 44% of the soybean crop is in vs. an average of 88% for the previous 5 year span and the harvest, in total, is proceeding at the slowest rate since the Dept. of Agriculture started keeping records in 1985.
“Most of the farmers’ income is still out there in the field. They’re anxious to get it harvested and anxious to know where they stand for the year”, Loyd Brown, president of Hertz Farm Management, whose Nevada, Iowa (I guess they ran out of names going West) company manages more than 430,000 acres split among 1,800 farms across the Midwest.
[snip]
Yeah, but the REAL science says we're in for more of the same. Read up on sunspots, the Maunder minimum, and the climate connection between them.
You might like "The Last Centurion", by John Ringo. It's mainly military sci-fi, but the connection to farming, sunspots, and climate is at the core of the plot.
Farmers in SW Ontario are having difficulty getting the corn in too.
They left out the lower than normal number of growing degree days (lower temperatures in July & August) during the growing season. This, in addition to the cool fall delayed maturity.
In spite of the adversity, the crop volume is predicted to be #2 for corn and #1 for soy beans. The harvest delay appears to be universal over the whole Midwest,Nebraska to Indiana (Ohio?), Minnesota to Arkansas. Farmers in south eastern Kansas are looking for rice tires for their combines.
I talked to a farmer putting the corn head on his combine on my morning run today. He says the moisture content is finally down to about 19-20%. Also that he was leaving tracks last night as he was harvesting beans.
Next possibility for rain here is Tuesday. Unless they get stuck out in the muddy fields or get stuck waiting for dryers, the local farmers should get most of their crops out.
An earlier period, the Maunder Minimum, where there was a long interval of few-to-no sunspots, coincided with the Little Ice Age.
We are currently in a situation where Solar Cycle 24 is very late getting started, and the models keep getting re-figured and lowered (Currently to close to Dalton Minimum levels).
Global Warming be damned.
From the point of view of the crops, every harvest is tough.
Deuteronomy 28
15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. [a] 21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
Bummer.
You’re going to have to point me to the part where the point was “immediately shown to be false”. Are the crops still in the field, or not? Is the harvest in jeopardy in many areas, or not?
The harvest would be even more bountiful if Michigan wasn’t still unharvested.
Thank you for your words. We’re thankful that we’ll be able to farm another year. There are many who will not be able to say the same.
The guy wrote an article based upon last week’s weather. Take a look at the 5 day forcast for Des Moines, Iowa. Last week was wet in the corn belt; this week is dry.
Good job, Mr. Lucky
Our harvest is way behind, but it looks like the next 10 days they better go great guns. We have a lot of mold on the corn, and I don’t know what is in the soybeans. When the field across the road was picked 2 weeks ago, it was the foulest smell I’ve ever experienced in a bean harvest.
I particularly liked the comment at the link by the technical analysis “bull” who thought wave theory showed better prices. I don’t think wave theory can account for weather anomalies.....
hh
May God bless and keep all farmers. My brother had a bumper sticker "Don't criticize farmers with your mouth full". That pretty much says it all.
LOL! Yeah, a week of weather. I thought for a minute there you had read and understood the article. Enjoy your day Mr. Lucky.
Yes, that says it all. I have a bumper sticker that reads “If you Eat You’re Involved in Agriculture”.
This year's corn crop is estimated to exceed 13 Billion bushels. Some farmers, apparently, have managed to plant and harvest a good crop.
My sympathy for the bad season you're going through. Clarification on two points I was trying to make:
1) I think we are in a general trend of colder, wetter weather. I think this has been going on for some years, and is tied to a lack of sunspot activity. For this reason, I think fears of a longterm Global Warming trend are inflated. A year like this one is not sufficient proof of this, but I think it does serve as one example of the existing trend.
2) IF Global Warming were a real thing, we're all supposed to panic and worry about our impending doom. I fact, I think many (not all) farms would benefit from warmer temperatures, longer growing seasons, and more abundant CO2. I'm sure Global Warming (if it were real) would bring some challenges -- but my knowledge of history tells me that cold, wet weather present much more serious challenges for humanity. If every year were like this year, I think it would be bad. So, I don't worry about Global Warming nearly as much as I do about Global Cooling.
Thanks for the clarification. We could use a little global cooling here in Louisiana (just not this month ... we’re trying to get cotton to open). ;-)
Don’t cry ... you’ll improve your reading comprehension with practice. ;-)
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