Posted on 11/16/2009 8:44:26 AM PST by Kartographer
The graphic below shows counties designated as disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (data from the USDA. See http://www.fema.gov/dhsusda/searchState.do). It speaks for itself.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketskeptics.com ...
How come Washington DC isn’t listed? After all, DC is a man made disaster area of many magnitudes over natural events.
That top left county in Colorado is Pitkin, home to Aspen and not a whole lot else. Why it’d be an Ag Disaster is beyond me. I assume it’s just a chance to reward Blue Counties.
“I assume it’s just a chance to reward Blue Counties.”
I don’t think so: Look at the whole state of Oklahoma - they have many red counties!
Keep your eyes North of the Ohio, and West of the Alleghenies out to the Dakotas ~ with Missouri kind of divied up all over the place ~ definitely half the territory.
Now, for the Souf', it's in even worse shape.
This is what happens when you have a dry winter and cool winds in Spring and Summer that bring in vast areas of heavy overcast and torrential rains.
The famines are on the way and the price of grain is going up!
I had a great Harvest over the summer!
Hey, what do New Yorkers know about Midwestern geography? :)
BTW - We're on target to break the all time annual rain record in our state, if we get a little over 2 more inches of rain by year end. We're 25+ inches over average so far. Soybeans, cotton, and even rice are a disaster here this year. To wet to harvest or moldy. And we are the nation's rice capital. And it's raining here again today. Out toes are starting to develop webbing.
Out = Our
Almost a perfect match.
Every county save two here in MO is a disaster area? We had a middlin to good harvest so far. What the hell are they talking about?
Pretty funny. Pike County, PA is the little yellow point that sticks out at the extreme eastern end of the graph.
Nothing much in the way of agriculture happens here. It is all rocks glacieated plateau. 32% of our roughly 400 square mile county is state forest, state gameland or National Park.
Only disaster I am aware of is a hay shortage and the tomato blight. I think there may be 5 farms left in the county.
Are those habaneros on the left? Nice crop.
Exactly what I'm wondering. We're in the NW corner of MO and it's a bountiful year.
Delta Farm Press reports that Arkansas would be lucky to make ‘half the crop’.
Soybeans: ‘half the crop’
Nov 12, 2009 10:37 AM, By David Bennett, Farm Press Editorial Staff
On Nov. 4, Gus Wilson took a sample of soybeans with 100 percent damage.
“It was the first time I’ve seen that,” says the Chicot County, Ark., Extension staff chair. “The situation here is bad, bleak. We’ll be lucky to make half the crop we’ve made in the last three to four years. That’s strictly due to the weather.”
Chicot County in extreme southeast Arkansas has caught huge rains all fall. Now, watching crops deteriorate, Wilson says he’s not seen “a group of growers who’ve been more discouraged. Those who were planning to plant wheat may be out of luck. If there’s wheat planted and emerged in Chicot County, I don’t know where it’s at.”
As in the rest of the Mid-South, the county has had several good days of weather. But fields “are rutting up big-time. The cost to our farmers for field preparation next year is going to be high. Rice ground will definitely have be disked a couple of times and landplaned — we’ve got major ruts. The lower ends of fields are horrible.
“People are getting stuck, left and right. This heavy buckshot is just at the right doughy stage where it wants to stick and not shed.
“We have lost some crops already and there’s still water backed up. There will be parts of fields abandoned.”
…
Plunkett says area elevators are “looking closely at what they accept. Around here, I think they’ll go up to about 20 percent dockage. So far, the bad bean situations have been running in the 15 percent dockage range. Some may be a little higher than that.”
…
Back in Chicot County, Wilson says the early corn harvested “was okay. I’d estimate that, compared to the last two years, we were down to 35 to 45 bushels per acre [for corn]. That was because of the spring rains.”
Faced with a seemingly unceasing deluge in 2009, veteran farmers are struggling to come up with a similar year in the past.
“My father is 82 years old and he’s farmed 55 to 60 years,” says Wilson. “He says this is the worst harvest season he’s ever seen. Out of his career, he said only one year comes close — he can’t remember if it was in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
“It’s awful. I’m hearing, ‘I won’t be able to pay my bills.’ I hope that doesn’t mean there will be any bankruptcies. Hopefully, there will be a disaster payment, a direct payment from the feds.”
Hmmmm, that map shows Cook County, IL as an Ag Disaster area. Cook County = Chicago. Not too many farms in Chicago.
More that is 0bama’s fault.
Had to get to the end of the article find the truth..
Hmm... Maybe the ACORN crop has suffered? ;-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.