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July 13, 2011
· Drought spreads pain from Florida to Arizona
· Slim work force impacting California farms
· Heirloom tomatoes a big hit in Arkansas
· US farmers favor GM seeds – USDA study
· How scientists can get growers to innovate
Drought spreads pain from Florida to Arizona
(The
New York Times) COLQUITT,
Farmers with the money and equipment to irrigate are running wells dry in the unseasonably early and particularly brutal national drought that some say could rival the Dust Bowl days.
“It’s horrible so far,” said Mike Newberry, a
The pain has spread across 14 states, from
In
Last month, the United States Department of Agriculture
designated all 254 counties in
Even if weather patterns shift and relief-giving rain comes,
losses will surely head past $3 billion in
Most troubling is that the drought, which could go down as
one of the nation’s worst, has come on extra hot and
extra early. It has its roots in 2010 and continued through the winter. The
five months from this February to June, for example, were so dry that they
shattered a
“We’ve had a two- or three-week start on what is likely to be a disastrous summer,” said Kevin Kloesel, director of the Oklahoma Climatological Survey.
The question, of course, becomes why. In a spring and summer in which weather news has been dominated by epic floods and tornadoes, it is hard to imagine that more than a quarter of the country is facing an equally daunting but very different kind of natural disaster.
From a meteorological standpoint, the answer is fairly simple. “A strong La Niña shut off the southern pipeline of moisture,” said David Miskus, who monitors drought for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The weather pattern called La Niña is an abnormal cooling of Pacific waters. It usually follows El Niño, which is an abnormal warming of those same waters.
Although a new forecast from the National Weather Service’s
Climatologists say the great drought of 2011 is starting to look a lot like the one that hit the nation in the early to mid-1950s. That, too, dried a broad part of the southern tier of states into leather and remains a record breaker.
But this time, things are different in the drought belt. With states and towns short on cash and unemployment still high, the stress on the land and the people who rely on it for a living is being amplified by political and economic forces, state and local officials say. As a result, this drought is likely to have the cultural impact of the great 1930s drought, which hammered an already weakened nation.
“In the ’30s, you had the Depression and everything that happened with that, and drought on top,” said Donald A. Wilhite, director of the school of natural resources at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and former director of the National Drought Mitigation Center. “The combination of those two things was devastating.”
Although today’s economy is not as bad, many Americans ground down by prolonged economic insecurity have little wiggle room to handle the effects of a prolonged drought. Government agencies are in the same boat.
“Because we overspent, the Legislature overspent, we’ve been cut back and then the drought comes along and we don’t have the resources and federal government doesn’t, and so we just tighten our belt and go on,” said Donald Butler, the director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture.
The drought is having some odd effects, economically and otherwise.
“One of the biggest impacts of the drought is going to be
the shrinking of the cattle herd in the
Ranchers whose grass was killed by drought cannot afford to sustain cattle with hay or other feed, which is also climbing in price. Their response will most likely be to send animals to slaughter early. That glut of beef would lower prices temporarily.
But
There are other problems. Fishing tournaments have been
canceled in
In this corner of
The mussels live in Spring Creek, which is dangerously low and borders Terry Pickle’s 2,000-acre farm here. He pulls his irrigation from wells that tie into the water system of which Spring Creek is a part.
Whether nature or agriculture is to blame remains a debate
in a state that for 20 years has been embroiled in a water war with
Most farmers here are much more worried about the crops than the mussels. With cotton and corn prices high, they had high hopes for the season. But many have had to replant fields several times to get even one crop to survive. Others, like Mr. Pickle, have relied on irrigation so expensive that it threatens to eat into any profits.
The water is free, but the system used to get it from the ground runs on diesel fuel. His bill for May and June was an unheard of $88,442.
Thousands of small stories like that will all contribute to the ultimate financial impact of the drought, which will not be known until it is over. And no one knows when that will be.
The United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service
Agency has already provided over $75 million in assistance to ranchers
nationwide, with most of it going to
Economists say that adding up the effects of drought is far more complicated than, say, those of a hurricane or tornado, which destroy structures that have set values. With drought, a shattered wheat or corn crop is a loss to one farmer, and it has a specific price tag. But all those individual losses punch a hole in the food supply and drive prices up. That is good news for a farmer who manages to get a crop in. The final net costs down the line are thus dispersed, and mostly passed along.
That means grocery shoppers will feel the effects of the
drought at the dinner table, where the cost of staples like meat and bread will
most likely rise, said Michael J. Roberts, an associate professor of
agricultural and resource economics at
Kim
Severson reported from Colquitt, Ga., and Kirk Johnson from
Slim work force impacting California
(New
American Media) – The number of immigrants illegally crossing into the
“We’ve seen in the valley this year a reduction of labor
that we haven’t seen for five or six years,” said Manuel Cunha, president of
the Nisei Farmers League in
“There could be crops that could go down as being damaged because they cannot be harvested fast enough. Many of the vegetables growing in the valley are going to be in competition for the labor as well,” he said. “You’re going to see rotting.”
Net immigration from
Experts say the deciding factor in the decision to migrate
north is often an economic one – and with unemployment remaining high in the
“We’ve heard that many people from Tijuana or Juarez at different times have migrated out of fear for their personal security or that of their families’ to San Diego or El Paso, but those aren’t typical migrants,” said Robert Donnelly, program associate at the Mexico Institute in Washington, D.C., a research center that studies U.S.-Mexico relations. “I would think that in most parts of the country the leading factor is still economic.”
The evidence of slowing illegal migration can be seen along the border: Border apprehensions of undocumented Mexicans have fallen more than 70 percent since 2000. Meanwhile, an increase in legal migration of Mexicans has brought in 64 percent more immediate relatives from 2006-2010 than during the previous five years.
On some farms across
“We have heard from some of our members that the labor
market is tightening up,” said Wendy Fink-Weber, spokesperson for Western
Growers in
Don Villarejo, founder of the
California Institute for Rural Studies, agrees that
“This year, starting in January and February, there was a
shortage of people planting vegetables in the
“We’ve seen a reduction in crew where there are usually 20 to 25 people in a crew. Now they are down to 14 to 15, or 17 to18.”
But not everyone has seen a drop in labor.
Maria Machuca, communications
director of United Farm Workers, estimates that there are “approximately
450,000 farm workers that travel from farm to farm in
“There are actually a lot of farm workers looking for jobs during the season (between May and September), so we haven’t heard that people have jobs open,” she said.
Some of this may be due to a decrease in farm jobs as more machines replace workers, noted Villarejo. “Owing to mechanization, shifts in cropping patterns,” he said, “there has actually been a roughly 15 percent decline for hired farm workers in the past 15 years.”
But mechanical practices can’t fix the labor shortage, noted Cunha. “Vines cannot be picked mechanically.”
Dave Kranz, spokesperson for the
California Farm Bureau Federation, a private non-profit organization in
But he added, “hiring people who can come and go legally” has been a “long-term concern” for the agricultural industry.
“It’s a hard thing to get farmers to talk about,” added Fink-Weber, “even though we admit that 70 percent of our workforce as a whole is improperly documented.”
“Here in
With anti-immigration bills being signed into law in various states, policies toward immigrants could have a direct impact on labor, according to Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA).
“Workers are making decisions on what states to move to based on the welcoming nature of that state,” Salas said.
Fink-Weber of Western Growers added that she is hearing from
her agricultural members that, “If they are going to expand, they aren’t doing
it in the
Heirloom tomatoes a big hit in Arkansas
LITTLE ROCK,
The dessert with a hint of zing was the highlight of an
all-tomato feast on Friday in
Guests enjoyed a buffet dinner of stuffed tomatoes, tomato flatbread, five-tomato salad, basil chicken and several tomato-based sides topped off with tomato cake.
The all-tomato dinner grew out of consumer yearning for home-grown tomatoes rather than the hard, grainy and tasteless offerings at many grocery stores, organizers said.
"There is an argument for heirlooms in that they are
better tasting than commercial varieties that you find in a grocery
store," said Dr. Bob Stark, professor of agricultural economics at the
Southeast Research and
"People who have grown up eating home-grown tomatoes are finding that they want them again and may pay a premium price for them," he said.
Heirloom tomatoes are varieties handed down through generations, perhaps with the seeds passed within families.
For southern
Stark and Paul Francis, a professor of plant and soil science, have been working for two years, in part with funding from the Arkansas Agriculture Department, to research heirloom tomatoes' economic viability.
In recent years, heirloom tomatoes, any open-pollinated traditional variety that is at least 50 years old or older, have become more popular. But unlike tomatoes grown in mass hot houses, an heirloom tomato is less disease resistant, bruises more easily and has a shorter shelf life.
The seeds from heirlooms can be saved and planted the next year. In contrast, commercial tomatoes are hybrids grown for conformity, and growers have to buy seeds each year adding to production costs.
Since 1956,
"To some extent, the heritage of the people who originally
settled southeast
The state was once a major tomato producer. In 1989,
southeast
John Gavin,
"You will pay for the delicacy of it," said Gavin. "But people are willing to do it as we are beginning to see."
Stark and Francis have given seeds and plants to area growers to test endurance and blight resistance.
At Friday night's dinner, guests left with seeds, tomatoes and recipes.
"The interest is definitely there, thanks to Food Network (television) chefs talking about heirlooms, but we will continue to fuel interest in these tomatoes especially to growers despite some disease risk," said Stark.
US
(desmoinesregister.com) – Genetically engineered varieties of soybeans, cotton and corn are preferred by American farmers over their conventional and organic counterparts, according to newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Key findings of USDA's Economic Research Service report,
Adoption of Genetically Engineered Crops in the
- The use of GE soybeans rose to 94 percent in 2011, up from 93 percent in 2010.
- The use of GE cotton is at 90 percent in 2011, down slightly from 93 percent in 2010, but up from 88 percent in 2009.
- The use of biotech corn climbed to 88 percent in 2011, up from 86 percent in 2010.
Ab Basu,
acting executive vice president, food and agriculture for the Biotechnology
Industry Organization, issued the following statement in response to the
report's findings: "This year's data on adoption of genetically engineered
crops suggest that nine out of 10
How scientists can get growers to innovate
(SciDev.net)
US scientists conducted interviews with agricultural experts, credit unions and farmers in the Yaqui Valley, Mexico — home of the 'green revolution' in wheat.
They found that, while farmers have successfully adopted
many new technologies such as new wheat varieties released by the International
Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT),
For example, a CIMMYT initiative to promote alternative fertiliser management strategies — with successful on-farm trials that had shown the approaches could save farmers a lot of money — was not taken up by farmers.
This was partly because of the influence of credit unions — which provide crop loans and insurance. The unions' role as retailers of fertiliser, seeds and other agricultural inputs may mean that they are more likely to advise farmers to stick to tried and tested techniques, instead of trying innovations, said the researchers.
Their influence is strong because state-funded agricultural extension systems were scaled back, which led to the unions also providing technical advice, the researchers said. This means farmers are more likely to listen to these unions than researchers.
"The most successful innovations that have been adopted
by farmers in the
Researchers have to recognise and engage with local knowledge systems and actors, such as credit unions, if they are to roll out their innovations, said the authors.
"Our study highlights the need for scientists who want their knowledge and know-how to be useful and used by farmers to pay attention to the knowledge system," McCullough said. "Researchers should spend some time studying the knowledge system before assuming too much about it; this will help them understand what types of information decision-makers need and how to reach them."
But researchers working in the area told SciDev.Net their links with the farmer community are already strong.
Pedro Aquino, a principal researcher in CIMMYT's socioeconomic programme, said that the organisation is looking at developing improved technologies and management strategies that incorporate all players in the farming community in the region, which "holds the closest links between researchers and farmers in the whole country".
Lope Montoya-Coronado, head of the
He said that what set farmers in this region apart was the strength of the networks: farmers raise funds through a local board to help researchers develop high-priority technologies.
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