After drought blights crops, US farmers face toxin threat

Originally posted by sonnny1

Originally posted by Stormdancer777


Strange times we are living in.

Tuesday is soylent green day..........?


I hope THATS not the future.......

Eeeeeek

Originally posted by sonnny1
Scary, to know how a drought, can cause so much damage, to everything it touches.


And on a side note...I do believe we should actually stop subsidizing our Fuel, with Corn based Ethanol, and actually use the Corn, for feeding the World. Just My humble Opinion.

good words Sonny

How bad is this drought going to be in October? yeah, October possibly 10 more weeks before relief?

reply to post by rebellender


Absolutely crazy. No contingency plan either, from our Government. THIS is what the Government should be prepared for.

reply to post by sonnny1



My solution to all my problems has always been a higher power.

reply to post by sonnny1

indeed!!!
all we get is the ugly finger. They care not for our country...only for their paychecks, and constituents I say vote with a write in of "ZERO"


ETA: I pray for a rib eye every morning. So far nothing has slammed onto the dinner table. It must be my faith, not holding my mouth right....or is it I prayed a miss..........nah, the steak didnt miss the plate, it never fell from Heaven.

Originally posted by Stormdancer777
reply to post by sonnny1

 

My solution to all my problems has always been a higher power.

I used to not believe that way, actually.

Now, I know from experiences, that something does exist. I do pray.

I guess "higher powers" have reached their "level of incompetence" ! !
See how bad it's going on the planet, now !
You know?: the "Peter principle". . .

But let's keep positive and intent well !

Blue skies.

I hate to say it... but there are two droughts..or they've merged.. whatever. This is the other one and it started well before Nature had her say on things.



Those signs are up and down the California Central valley and I started seeing them a couple seasons before I got off the truck. That was 2010.

A few weeks ago, Ty and Janet Lompa were doing the unthinkable: cutting down 110 acres of walnut orchards. That’s roughly 10,000 trees and a third of their entire acreage.

“It takes 30 years to get ‘em here,” says Janet Lompa, “and about a minute and a half to knock ‘em down.”

Ty Lompa helped plant many of these trees with his father, and they used to water the orchard with flood irrigation from the project built by the federal government.

Most of California gets its water from a huge estuary called the Delta, where two big rivers join in the center of the valley. But so much water was being pumped out of the Delta that a tiny smelt there, an endangered species, is disappearing. So late last year, a federal judge ruled that the amount of water being delivered to the south had to be sharply cut back.

“Since mid-February, as a result of that biological opinion, we’ve lost approximately 300,000 acre-feet of water. It’s floated out the Golden Gate.”

Source

That was a bad scene when nature was still treating the rest of the nation well and crops were coming in with solid numbers Now, well.... this thread says it all and as the story above notes, some of the damage done can't be undone quickly or easily. Orchards wiped out...and by Government action, not nature.

We've doomed ourselves, by our own bad judgement and decisions...and the roots started years ago, IMO. Now we're at what Glenn Beck used to refer to as "The Perfect Storm" phase, before he went so far off the deep end himself. The storm is almost here.....get out those umbrellas and batten down the hatches. It's gonna be a bitch.

Nitrogen, if injected into the soil also kills earthworms. Sad. Not as much if the application is on top of the ground. This silage will be tested and used safely. This information is in every rural paper right now. No farmer is going to sacrifice expensive cattle. A larger concern is the feed shortages. How are livestock and people going to be fed? On a good note...the rains have come and the soybeans look much better.

If this weather trend continues...farmers may need to grow cotton...in the North.

I don't have anything positive to contribute, unfortunately. Missouri where I live is in sever drought and my town has had to close one of the wells. It isn't just food that will become an extreme issue if this continues as it is forecast to. We will pay higher prices for everything this winter, and if this drought continues next summer we may see shortages of some food items and water.

Maybe its time farmers start transitioning to more sustainable agriculture techniques.

Industrial agriculture deplete the soil of its nutrients and sterilize the soil through use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. The depleted soil lack in the minerals humans needs thus giving us calories without the nutrition we need causing obesity. The body is starving of the minerals and people just keep eating nutritionally depleted food. Not to mention the devastating ecological effects of monoculture. In nature their is a variety of organisms that keep the ecosystem in balance. In a industrial farm one crop is planted over vast acres. This attracts one type of pest and not enough beneficial. This is an ignorant farming practice and the solution is to use more poisons (pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers) that leach into the water systems and harm the ecosystem.

Modern industrial agriculture is bound for failure unless their are some serious changes. It'd be easy for me to blame the mega farmers, but that be to easy. It is the fault of the consumers of the US's lack of consciousness awareness of where their food comes from. As an American we vote with our dollar and most of us have voted in favor of the unethical and destructive methods of industrial agriculture. Their is a total lack of reflection on the model nature has given us to create abundant systems that serve both human and wildlife needs in monocultures.

Well this is the part that I tell you the good news. Its called becoming self sufficient and you don't have to wait for the rest of the world to catch on. A lot of people are learning about a farming philosophy called permaculture. Permaculture symbolizes permanent culture or a sustainable culture. I permaculture we create systems that mimic the patterns in nature that serve both human and natures needs. Variety is the spice of life in this practice.

Originally posted by sonnny1

Originally posted by neo96


Toxins not only in feedstock, but the run off from fields that most have poor drainage, and it can take some time before a field will be able to produce again.

That is the scariest part of it all, MHO.

I wonder how this is going to effect prices, in the near future ?

Food, Gas, Etc.........

This cant be good, Im afraid.

It's worse than that, but the brunt of the shortage won't be borne by Americans. We will see our prices on all commodities soar, yes, but this is going to starve a lot of people who depend on our grain exports.

One of the solutions I've seen being proposed if this 100 year drought in the midwest is really on, is relocating the breadbasket up north to Canada. This puzzles me because:

A. The poor soil quality up thar makes it unfeasible.
B. There are billions of acres of some of the most fertile agricultural land on the planet lying fallow in the former USSR.

No one needs to starve.

Originally posted by Eidolon23


It's worse than that, but the brunt of the shortage won't be borne by Americans. We will see our prices on all commodities soar, yes, but this is going to starve a lot of people who depend on our grain exports.

I fear that also.

We are still going to stick food, in our tailpipes, thats for sure......

Thats sad also.