Posted on 02/09/2014 12:05:15 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Much like the polar vortex spiked demand and prices for natural gas in the eastern U.S., another weather phenomenon — a severe drought — is threatening cattle and milk production and food crops in the West.
It’s a threat that can last for months and year, and parched conditions have already driven up prices on milk and cattle futures.
“The hardest hit section of California is the Central Valley — ‘the supermarket to the world’ — and [it’s becoming] increasingly clear the region won’t see relief from the devastating drought anytime soon,” said Kevin Kerr, editor of CommodityConfidential.com. “Retail prices for many key agricultural commodities could jump.”
That means consumers may see higher prices for everything from beef and milk to wheat, nuts and vegetables, and it’ll take time for supplies to replenish.
Drought conditions cover more than 37% of the 48 contiguous states, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor . MDA Weather Services said about 67% of California alone is currently experiencing extreme or exceptional drought conditions.
The state’s Gov. Edmund “Jerry” Brown, Jr. declared a drought State of Emergency on Jan. 17, calling on California’s residents to voluntarily cut water consumption by 20%.
The state is “already taking steps to limit water usage, so it is likely that irrigation supplies will be limited as well,” said Kyle Tapley, senior agricultural meteorologist of weather services at MDA Information Systems LLC....
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Ha ha.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I’ve been in farming—and in other industries.
Most other industries pay more for tough, dirty work and automate more as an offset—no reason farming shouldn’t too.
In many areas, high school and college kids would love to work on farms, but if anything they’ve been priced out of jobs by illegals.
Farming where irrigation is required, but doesn’t work simply doesn’t make sense—and should be moved elsewhere. Everyone else in the region shouldn’t be made to survive on drops of water because the farms are taking all the resources.
Sorry.
The simple answer is for the most water-intensive uses to be moved elsewhere, where less irrigation is required and/or more water is available.
Yep, I am.
But as an aside, farmers in those areas think the laws of labor supply and demand shouldn’t apply to them either, and they should be allowed to simply hire illegal workers that the rest of us subsidize through taxes.
Ummm—California is larger and more populous than the individual states in the Midwest.
Very true.
California wine is a staple around this household’s dinner table. It’s one of the largest parts of the economy here. There are about 450 wineries in Sonoma County, another 400 in Napa. Even my own county east of Sonoma and Napa has 50 wineries. You might be able to live without it, but thousands of residents of Northern California couldn’t live without it’s obvious benefits to the economy....
I’ve also had wine produced from the Lubbock area. Sucks to be a Texas wine lover....
BTW, a cycle of megafloods in CA would be even more disastrous than a megadrought.
If you going to try an insult me with the word y’all at least use it correctly. You ever hear of the Ogallala Aquifer, 8 states have been irrigating from it since the 1900’s. Around 25% of the irrigated crops in the US are supplied by this aquifer.
“Sucks to be a Texas wine lover....”
Never like wine anyway so I’ll never know. I’ll stick with iced tea.
I’m in Denton, where are you at?
“At the risk of misinterpretation, I think what 9Year is referring to here as an “unsustainable resource model” is the water, not the labor.”
Absolutely true! I was simply pointing out what has happened here with respect to labor. I am not a fan of illegal immigration. That said, the Hispanics are, by and large, hard-working, Christian, family-oriented people. California needs to turn away from crops like rice and cotton. they are very water-intensive. We also raise a lot of cattle, which have to be fed, not generally grazed. Don’t know if that makes sense either.
The issue of availability of water is the kicker. Instead of building high-speed trains to nowhere, we should have been building water infrastructure to support both our agriculture and our population, but it isn’t sexy for the RATs in government and they don’t like pi$$ing off the envirowhackos, so here we are, with a major problem and nowhere near any real solutions. We must build more primary water storage and get away from degrading our water system because of some damned fish. The endangered species in the US and here in particular is the human being.
It may well be too late if some of the historical data proves to be accurate. I just read somewhere that the past 100 years have been unusually wet in California. If’ that’s true we have really jumped the shark. Your last sentence says it all.
“If you going to try an insult me with the word y’all at least use it correctly.”
Sorry, it’s been 15 years since I worked in Memphis. I don’t see crop irrigation to the extend that we have it here in CA anywhere else. And there’s still the matter of CA being the country’s major fruits and vegetables provider. If other locales were as productive, I think you would see our markets taken from us. I spend a lot of time down in Monterey County. Traveling between The Peninsula and Salinas has provided me with an up close view of row crop agriculture. The growing cycle is very short due to the climatic conditions, and there is really no growing season. The crops rotate, but the fields are always producing. The green vegetables take only a few weeks to grow to maturity. Then there’s a week or two to prep and replant and it starts over again uninterrupted by winter. It is nothing short of amazing to watch! We grow strawberries year round!
Its raining in the Central Valley right now.
(Be afraid, be very afraid)
There’s no chance of flooding, but it is raining today as it has for the past three days.
>> “The California Water Project is a Federal one, not State.” <<
.
Not so!
The big aqueduct is run by the California Department of Water Resources, the smaller Delta-Mendota canal is a federal system.
The feds are not our problem in California, the state is.
Resistance by Dems to building reservoirs is part of our problem, but wasting water on fish is a bigger one.
Sorry I was so gruff with you thats not my nature. I realize how productive it is but it’s all dependent from outside water and thats leaves it very vulnerable. We could grow outstanding crops here in West TX if we just had the water but it’s just not there. We drill wells but they just keep us from drying up, we’re not on the Ogalla. The farmers here could grow summer and winter crops if needed but they just don’t have that much pressure on them with CRP and subsidies. When I was kid my granddad always had something growing winter or summer. Now a person can plant cotton and call it a year.
Iced tea is good. Especially if it’s laced with bourbon!
Not a problem! California is only productive because of the availability of water. As you point out, Texas has some of the same climatic conditions, but unfortunately, you don’t have the Sierra Nevada mountains to capture rainwater and snow for use during the summer. Our problem is that the rainfall is not necessarily reliable, and our state and federal governments collectively have not been proactive in increasing storage capacity all the while the population has boomed along with agriculture.
I guess you are also referring to the negative effects of crop subsidies. We have made bums out of our farmers by the “farm welfare system” that has been created. When I was going to UC, I worked in a peach cannery where the FDA had “inspectors” in-house to make certain that we threw away a substantial portion of the incoming fruit to keep the price up. All the while, people around the world haven’t enough to eat! The old song “We don’t plant cotton, we don’t plant tatters, cause we get paid by the legislators, for growing nuttin’,” is as true today as it was 50 years ago. The only thing that these programs have done was succeeding in the consolidation of farms in the hands of fewer people.
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