Frost Devastates Western Australia Wheat Belt

I think this story is very interesting. The frost effected some 10,000 to 20,000 hectares of wheat which is roughly 25,000 to 50,000 standard acres. Keep in mind that this year and last year there was frost damage to the Canadian grain belt as well.

"The state's major grain handler is predicting a bumper harvest out of the west, but about 30 farms have suffered severe frosts.

Darren Marquis from Synergy Consulting says reports are still coming in, but predicts between 10,000 and 20,000 hectares has been affected.

"In some areas north of Merredin, we're sort of looking at probably close to 80 to 90 per cent loss of wheat," he said."

Source: www.abc.net.au...

I saw something on 4 corners about this last night. very strange considering the amount of desert out that way.

This is all because of global warming, right? (I hope I can get someone to answer this with a straight face!)

Ok, so we have madcow, toxic chickens, and now the wheat is bad so no bread. Sounds like Mother nature is trying to get rid of us. Between that and all the natural disasters the past 12 months alone, we must have really pissed her off.

Oh, wait....

I meant to include this as a separate thread, but it works fine here. Frost and drought are not the only problems....

Look at this!

Fungal disease poses threat to global wheat crop

A new strain of a wheat fungal disease that has emerged in East Africa may spread if steps are not taken to develop resistant wheat, researchers said on Thursday.

As much as 10% of the world's wheat crops, with an estimated value of $9-billion, could fail if the disease is not tackled, said Masa Iwanaga, the director general of
the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre, based in Mexico.

A team of experts drawn from the centre, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and other organisations wrote a report on the disease that was made public on Thursday.

Iwanaga told journalists that it would cost about $3-million a year to develop wheat varieties resistant to this relatively new variant of a fungal disease called stem rust that eats away wheat from the stem up.

Miriam Kinyua of the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute said that the strain first confirmed in Uganda in 1999 attacks wheat as it sprouts from the ground and throughout its life span, whereas the other variants of stem rust only attack it when it is flowering.

Kinyua said that this means farmers have to apply fungicide at least three times during a wheat plant's lifetime, rather than the usual one-time spraying, adding to the costs of production.

She said that in Kenya all wheat farms have been affected as well all those in Uganda and Ethiopia. Kenyan small scale farmers, who produce 20% of the country's wheat, have lost as much as 50% of their wheat because of the disease, Kinyua said.

Ravi Singh of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre said the strain was spread by wind from Uganda to Ethiopia and Kenya.

The new variant could spread to Egypt and Jordan because of the wind patterns between those countries and East Africa, and from there it can easily spread to the rest of the Middle East and Asia, Singh said.

"If you will ask me when exactly, it will be hard to say because this depends on the natural phenomenon .... It may happen this December or it may take a couple of years," Singh said.

Singh said that spores of the fungus can be carried as far as 3 000km.

Nobel Peace laureate Norman Borlaug said that the last global stem rust epidemic the world saw was in the 1950s and it was tackled by scientists from all over the world sharing information and collaborating on developing wheat varieties resistant to the disease.

More...

This is not good....

Originally posted by Toxic Fox
This is all because of global warming, right? (I hope I can get someone to answer this with a straight face!)

There was a time I would have teased you about that line Things are just so messed up right now I have no idea what to think. After the past two hurricane seasons I think all bets are off. The atmosphere has changed. It is much more volatile than in the recent past. Three of the six deepest lows ever in this region of the world happened this year. Japan got hit by what... 8 typhoons last year. Florida got hit by 4. I lost count of how many major hurricanes have hit the U.S. in the past 2 years. It was some obscene number. Of course this massive wheat problem, huge floods in the northeast and southwest. Extreme heat in TX. Tornados in the UK. And here its the 20th of October and most of our trees are completely green. Yet I look at the 16 day forecast and there is snow in the forecast for us. There have been strange animal migrations and disappearances. If you were a betting man or woman would you bet on things staying "normal" or stable? Not me. I guarantee you I have an eye to the sky. I think our atmosphere is about at the point where it can sustain a superstorm. I think the tropical system hitting Spain was a good sign that we are to that point. All we need now is something to kick it off.