Australia faces the end of Big Dry

Published on April 29, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Phew! What a scorcher that was.

Australians call it the Big Dry and, after nine parched years, it’s over.

It’s the drought that has afflicted large areas of this vast country and now the federal government is about to declare it officially at an end.

The final two areas to be given the all-clear are Bundarra and Eurobodalla in the south-eastern state of New South Wales.

In practical terms, it means that the last of special subsidies to farmers are being withdrawn.

It’s the end of “Exceptional Circumstances”, or EC, to use the bureaucratic jargon.

“The seasonal outlook is brighter than it has been for many years and the improved conditions are a welcome reprieve for farmers across Australia,” said Joe Ludwig, Australia’s agriculture minister.

He said the end of the drought would be a “a major milestone for agriculture in Australia”.

Since 2001, the government has provided 4.5bn Australian dollars ($4.7bn, £2.9bn) in EC assistance.

That’s the money handed out to struggling farmers, totalling between 400 and 600 dollars each, every fortnight.
‘Baffling’

Some farmers say the move to take away the EC assistance is premature.

The National Farmers Federation said the government’s “snap decision” to cut subsidies was “baffling”. Continue reading ‘Australia faces the end of Big Dry’

Farmers, ranchers brace for dry times

Published on April 21, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Rainfall levels in Upcountry areas are below normal this year, and there’s a bleak outlook for rain for ranchers and farmers as the islands head into the normally dry summer months, a hydrologist said Thursday.

“We’re headed out of our wet season. The outlook is not too good,” said Kevin Kodama, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service on Oahu.

From January through March, Kula received 5.5 inches of rain. Normally, it gets around 8.7 inches, Kodama said. Pukalani received 4 inches in the same time period while it normally gets around 16 inches. Ulupalakua received a little under 5 inches, and it usually gets about 10.

“We’re in really bad shape,” said Sumner Erdman, president of Ulupalakua Ranch. “The economic impacts have already hit.”

Erdman said this will be the fourth year his ranch has been impacted by dry conditions.

The economic losses amount in the “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he said.

The ranch has had to sell cattle. It now also sees cattle with lower weights because less rain means cows have less grass to feed on. The ranch also has lower reproduction rates because there are fewer cows to breed, Erdman said.

Over four years, the number of breeding cows has gone from 2,300 to 1,500, as the ranch sells them off to deal with the drought conditions, Erdman said.

The ranch currently has 3,800 head of cattle, with preparations under way to sell more, he said.

Warren Watanabe, executive director of the Maui County Farm Bureau, said the dry weather trend seems to follow the long-term prediction of scientists.

Because areas of extreme drought in Hawaii have increased in the past few months, with the hardest hit being the pasture areas on the Big Island, Maui and portions of Molokai, the farm bureau’s priority during this legislative session has been to fund drought mitigation projects. Continue reading ‘Farmers, ranchers brace for dry times’

Environmental groups sue over Lahaina treatment plant

Published on April 16, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

LAHAINA >> Four community groups are suing Maui County in federal court over alleged environmental violations at a Lahaina treatment plant.

The groups claim millions of gallons of wastewater injected into wells at the facility each day surface offshore of Kahekili Beach Park, killing coral and triggering outbreaks of invasive algae.

Earthjustice filed the complaint Monday on behalf of Hawaii Wildlife Fund, Surfrider Foundation, West Maui Preservation Association and Sierra Club-Maui Group. They notified the county of their intent to sue last year, alleging Clean Water Act violations have been ongoing for at least 20 years.

“We notified Maui County last June that its Lahaina facility was damaging the reef and operating illegally, in hope that the county would voluntarily seek the required permit for wastewater discharges from the injection wells,” said Earthjustice attorney Caroline Ishida. “Unfortunately, it apparently takes an enforcement action to get the county to do anything, which is why we’re not seeking relief from the court.”

County spokesman Rod Antone said corporation counsel attorneys had yet to receive the complaint, but that pending litigation prevents officials from commenting.

The suit asks that the county be directed to secure a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit Continue reading ‘Environmental groups sue over Lahaina treatment plant’

Reforestation not taking hold in land burned by Station fire

Published on April 8, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Federal forester Steve Bear stood on a fire-stripped slope of the San Gabriel Mountains last week, trying to find just one pine sapling, any sapling, pushing through the bright green bedspread of vegetation.

It would give him hope after a year of disappointment.

Last April, U.S. Forest Service crews planted nearly a million pine and fir trees to try to reclaim land scorched clean by the devastating Station fire. Most of them shriveled up and died within months, as skeptics had predicted.

“That’s too bad,” said Bear, resource officer for the service’s Los Angeles River Ranger District, shaking his head in disappointment. “When we planted seedlings, conditions were ideal in terms of soil composition and temperature, rainfall and weather trends. Then the ground dried out and there just wasn’t enough moisture after we planted.”

Foresters estimate that just a quarter of the 900,000 seedlings planted across 4,300 acres are thriving. That is far below the 75% to 80% survival rate the agency wanted.

On most slopes, instead of small trees, the ground nurtures dense shrubs and grass in the shadows of skeletal dead trees scorched by the 2009 blaze. Continue reading ‘Reforestation not taking hold in land burned by Station fire’

A dry season is expected for wildflowers in Southern California

Published on March 25, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Right about now, tiny goldfields and purple mat should be erupting in carpets of color on the desert floor at Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks. The gentle hills of the Antelope Valley poppy reserve should be turning bright orange with thousands of California poppy blossoms.

But so far this spring, wildflowers in local deserts and mountains are in short supply. Even the rainstorm that swept through Southern California last weekend won’t be able to rescue what flower watchers say is turning out to be a disappointing year.

“I have a feeling that if anything does happen, it’s going to be a late season and a short one,” says Helen Tarbet, a field ranger who leads wildflower walks at Figueroa Mountain in the Santa Lucia District of Los Padres National Forest.

Indeed, it has been a very dry year in California. In the Southland, the drenching winter rains critical for wildflowers to start germinating never materialized. The mid-March storm brought less than an inch to 4 inches of rain to Southern California, Santa Barbara area and the vicinity, but rainfall totals are still below normal for this time of year, according to the National Weather Service.

Statewide, the snowpack measured continues to be well-below last year’s record-setter.

“The pretty abysmal snowpack levels we have this year are going to impact a lot of recreational experiences,” says Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the state’s Department of Water Resources. Late rains in the Sierra could help, but the roaring waterfalls at Yosemite and the white-water courses of the Kern River probably will be less robust than usual.

Desert wildflowers might be one of the earliest harbingers of the low-water year. Continue reading ‘A dry season is expected for wildflowers in Southern California’

Report: Water shortages increasingly will offer weapon for states, terror groups

Published on March 22, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes, Globel Warming and Water.

By Karen DeYoung, Thursday, March 22, 4:19 AM

Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa, a U.S. intelligence assessment released Thursday says.

Although “water-related state conflict” is unlikely in the next 10 years, the assessment says, continued shortages after that might begin to affect U.S. national security interests.

The assessment is drawn from a classified National Intelligence Estimate distributed to policy-makers in October. Although the unclassified version does not mention problems in specific countries, it describes “strategically important water basins” tied to rivers in several regions. These include the Nile, which runs through 10 countries in central and northeastern Africa before traveling through Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea; the Tigris-Euphrates in Turkey, Syria and Iraq; the Jordan, long the subject of dispute among Israel, Jordan and the Palestinians; and the Indus, whose catchment area includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Tibet.

“As water problems become more acute, the likelihood … is that states will use them as leverage,” Continue reading ‘Report: Water shortages increasingly will offer weapon for states, terror groups’

Europe’s water resources ‘under pressure’

Published on March 13, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Continued inefficient use of water could threaten Europe’s economy, productivity and ecosystems, a report has warned.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) said that the continent’s water resources were under pressure and things were getting worse.

It said limited supplies were being wasted, and nations had to implement existing legislation more effectively.

The EEA presented its findings at the 6th World Water Forum in Marseilles.

“The critical thing for us is that we are seeing an increasing number of regions where river basins, because of climate change, are experiencing water scarcity,” said EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade.

“Yet behavioural change, and what that means, hasn’t really come about.”

Prof McGlade said the main purpose of the report was to raise awareness about the issue.

“Member states need to be clearer about the opportunities they can make in order to enhance their use of a scarce resource,” she told BBC News.

“Nations need to use different kinds of methods. Instead of just having a hosepipe ban to fix this year’s problem, you need to invest in a very different way.

“Long-term investment needs to recognise these different uses of how water is allocated, how it is used [and the need for] different water qualities.

“[The report] highlights all the different challenges as countries move from their historical position on water to where they are moving to [as a result of] climate change.”
Within the EU, agriculture uses about a quarter of the water diverted from the natural environment, and in southern Europe the figure is as high as 80%.

As there was an economic cost to farmers abstracting water to put on their crops, Prof McGlade said the sector was showing an increased awareness of where water was being used inefficiently. Continue reading ‘Europe’s water resources ‘under pressure’’

Saving desert tortoises is a costly hurdle for solar projects

Published on March 7, 2012 in Alternative Energy, General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Stubborn does not come close to describing the desert tortoise, a species that did its evolving more than 220 million years ago and has since remained resolutely prehistoric.

Its slowpoke take on biological adaptation has exposed modern vulnerabilities. The persnickety reptile is today beset by respiratory infections and prone to disease. Its only defenses are the shell on its back and the scent of its unspeakably foul urine.

At the $2.2-billion BrightSource Energy solar farm in the Ivanpah Valley, the tortoise brought construction to a standstill for three months when excavation work found far more animals than biologists expected.

BrightSource has spent $56 million so far to protect and relocate the tortoises, but even at that price, the work has met with unforeseen calamity: Animals crushed under vehicle tires, army ants attacking hatchlings in a makeshift nursery and one small tortoise carried off to an eagle nest, its embedded microchip pinging faintly as it receded.

History has shown the tortoise to be a stubborn survivor, withstanding upheavals that caused the grand dinosaur extinction and ice ages that wiped out most living creatures. But unless current recovery efforts begin to gain traction, this threatened species could become collateral damage in the war against fossil fuels. Continue reading ‘Saving desert tortoises is a costly hurdle for solar projects’

Drought will push up price of food, farmers warn

Published on February 26, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

Farmers in drought-stricken areas of the country are facing crucial decisions in the next few days and weeks over what to grow this year – and their plans could mean rising food prices for hard-pressed consumers this summer.

Most of the south-east of England was officially declared to be in drought last week, and large swaths of the Midlands and south of England were confirmed as “at risk”, with hosepipe bans and other restrictions likely to be introduced soon.

Farmers are particularly at risk as the spring growing period approaches. Soil moisture in the key agricultural region of East Anglia has reached a record low, and many farmers have had their licences to take water from rivers and underground sources curbed. Some key crops – such as potatoes, carrots, onions and lettuce – require much more water than alternatives, and farmers must sow the seeds for many of these staples within days or weeks.

Those who fear that the drought will reduce yields or render some crops unviable will be forced to cancel their seed orders now and put plans in place for alternatives. Richard Solari, who farms 1,200 acres in east Shropshire, said: “People have got to make decisions now, immediately, and a lot of farms are making decisions not to grow potatoes, onions and carrots because they are worried that there is not going to be enough water.” Continue reading ‘Drought will push up price of food, farmers warn’

Very little sweet news for sugar producers|Nation|chinadaily.com.cn

Published on February 22, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes, Sugar Cane and Water.

LINCANG, Yunnan – “I can’t expect any profit this year and I don’t know what to do next year,” said Li Xiuzhong, a 65-year-old sugarcane farmer in Lincang, Southwest China’s Yunnan province.

“We have 180 hectares of sugarcane last year and actually the beginning of the growing season was good due to sufficient rainfall,” he said. “But after June, things got worse so quickly and now there is no harvest in 30 hectares.”

His expectations have also dropped from five tons of crops for each hectare to three tons.

“These are already the best drought-resistant seeds and I have ploughed another 40 hectares for next year, hoping to earn more money,” he said. “But now, I have lost confidence in growing them under current weather conditions.”

He said he had grown sugarcane for more than 20 years and this year is the worst in terms of weather.

He is living on income from previous years.

Lincang used to be covered with thick forests and has rich water resources, but since the 2010 drought, its water conservation facilities have been under threat and agricultural production has been challenged.

Lincang’s sugar and tea industries are two pillars of its economy. Sixty percent of sugarcane crops were affected by the weather in 2010 and there was a conspicuous reduction of total production.

Ganhua Company is a major sugar factory in Yunxian county, and is experiencing a hard time with this year’s harvest.

According to Wei Xuehua, general director of the company, the scarcity of water has handed the company, as well as sugarcane farmers and delivery drivers, a total loss of 19 million yuan ($3 million) so far.

In addition, rats have also severely affected the production of sugarcane in the region as water can only be found in the plants. Continue reading ‘Very little sweet news for sugar producers|Nation|chinadaily.com.cn’

Discovery of ocean’s stately dance puts scientists in a spin

Published on February 21, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

AUSTRALIAN researchers have discovered that vast, pancake-shaped bodies of cool water, about 40 kilometres in diameter, are spinning out of Bass Strait into the Tasman Sea, and then turning east to head for the Indian Ocean.

The phenomenon happens at a stately pace, with perhaps one giant disc of water each year making it as far as the southern coast of Western Australia, after a journey of several years.

”At first we thought maybe there was a malfunction in the instruments,” said Mark Baird, an oceanographer and senior research fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney.
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”But there was no malfunction, we had just run into a ‘wall’ or water that was relatively sharp, and undiluted by the water around it. We were able to establish that it was a disc shape, a few hundred metres high and about 40 kilometres across.”

Dr Baird and fellow researcher Ken Ridgway from the CSIRO, were analysing data from a deep-diving ocean glider, a torpedo-like machine that dives a kilometre under the sea and then rises back to the surface, measuring water temperature and salinity.

Dozens of the gliders are deployed in the oceans of Australia’s coast and further afield, building up a detailed picture of ocean currents. Continue reading ‘Discovery of ocean’s stately dance puts scientists in a spin’

Environmentalists hope to turn the tide against use of sea walls

Published on January 1, 2012 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

For years, San Francisco’s Ocean Beach has been under assault by such powerful surf that a fierce winter storm can scour away 25 feet of bluff in just days.

The startling pace of the erosion near the San Francisco Zoo has compelled the city to spend $5 million to shore up the crumbling bluffs. The strategy has been simple: drop huge rocks and mounds of sand to protect the nearby Great Highway and the sewer pipes underneath from being destroyed by the crashing waves.

But as the enormous rocks have piled up, adding to a jumble of concrete — chunks of curb and bits and pieces of gutters — from parking lots that have tumbled onto the shore, so too have the demands that the city get rid of it all and let the coastline retreat naturally.

Now, San Francisco finds itself under fire from environmentalists, who call the rock and rubble unsightly and harmful to the beach, and the California Coastal Commission, which regulates development along the state’s 1,100-mile coastline but has refused to sign off on the fortifications, some of which have sat on the shore for 15 years without its permission. Continue reading ‘Environmentalists hope to turn the tide against use of sea walls’

Wet weather bears fruit for some

Published on December 23, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

THIS summer’s weather may be a let-down, but Sydneysiders can enjoy some of the lowest fruit and vegetable prices in years.

”You better believe it … I’m selling four mangoes for $5. Last year it was two for $5,” said Frank Vecchio, owner of the Wynyard Park fruit stand in Sydney’s CBD. In his 20 years of business, Mr Vecchio said he has not seen such quantities of produce at fruit and vegetable wholesale markets.

The chief executive officer of NSW Chamber of Fruit and Vegetable Industries, Colin Gray, said the oversupply was caused by a decline in consumer demand due to the recent unseasonal wet weather. Consequently, wholesale and retail prices have fallen.
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”The problem with the weather is that people are not buying as much, not enjoying barbecues with the fruit and salad bowls,” Mr Gray said.

In particular, the cooler weather has not enthused customers to buy traditional summer fruits such as mangoes, stone fruits and watermelons, according to Bill Chalk, wholesaler and partner of Southern Cross Produce.

He said wholesale prices for mangoes were $1-$2 per kilo compared with $5 per kilo last year and white peaches were $1-$1.50 per kilo, the lowest in years.

”The lower prices are a great thing for the public but it’s heartbreaking for the farmers,” said Mr Chalk, Continue reading ‘Wet weather bears fruit for some’

Elwha Dam removal illustrates growing movement

Published on September 18, 2011 in Alternative Energy, General Ag News and Notes and Water.

The largest dam demolition in the nation’s history will begin Saturday when an excavator claws away at the concrete supports for Washington’s 108-foot Elwha River Dam, a ceremonial act of destruction that will signal not only the structure’s demise but the latest step in a broad shift in the way Americans are managing rivers.

Faced with aging infrastructure and declining fish stocks, communities are tearing down dams across the country in key waterways that can generate more economic benefits when they’re unfettered than when they’re controlled.

“What once seemed radical is now mainstream,” said American Rivers President Bob Irvin, whose group has advocated dam removal for environmental reasons. “All of these are experiments in how nature can restore itself, and the Elwha is the biggest example of that.”

The pace of removal has quickened, with 241 dams demolished between 2006 and 2010, more than a 40 percent increase over the previous five years. Many of them are in the East and Midwest, having powered everything, including textile mills and paper operations at the turn of the 20th century.

A drumbeat of litigation by tribes and environmental groups has pushed federal officials to dismantle some dams that otherwise would have remained in place. Although this has led to political fights in regions where dams matter the most, such as the Pacific Northwest, it has also forged historic compromises.

“The Elwha River restoration marks a new era of river restoration in which broad community support provides the bedrock for work to sustain our rivers and the communities that rely on them,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement. Continue reading ‘Elwha Dam removal illustrates growing movement’

Dry again: drought back to stalk farmers

Published on September 4, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

FOR bull breeder Tim Vincent it is a bitter irony that his beloved country can change from drought to flooding rains, and back again, in just a few short months.

His family’s 850ha property outside Gunnedah in northern NSW was like a “little bit of paradise” after last season’s early rains. Today its ragged hills and plains are thick with parched grass, the nutritional value of cardboard, he said.

Mr Vincent, who shares the property with his wife Margaret, their two children and his now-retired parents, has been hand-feeding most of the family’s 450 prime cattle for months.

“I didn’t expect, after we had fences washed out and cattle all over the road in December, that it would change back so quickly,” he said. “Spring is our growing season, but I can tell you there’s not much growing happening here now.”

Mrs Vincent agreed: “Everyone thought we would have at least one or two good years.” Rainfall gauges in nearby Gunnedah recorded barely 250mm in the year to date, compared with an annual average of more than 600mm.

The Bureau of Meteorology puts the chance of making up the difference between now and summer at perhaps 25 per cent.

Even though most dams in the area are almost full, an ugly ochre patch on the NSW Department of Primary Industries agricultural conditions map for last month marks drought in central-northern NSW. Parts of three districts were drought-declared last month, and five more downgraded from satisfactory to marginal.

A spokesman for NSW Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson said she was aware small pockets of the state had slipped into drought. “The minister has noted that there are small portions of NSW that have not received the rain that everywhere else has. But in a state as big as NSW you won’t get a good season (for) everyone.” Continue reading ‘Dry again: drought back to stalk farmers’

Severe drought in Texas could result in record losses in nation’s No. 2 agriculture state

Published on July 26, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.

LUBBOCK, Texas — Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West Texas before he decided to give up irrigating 75 acres of corn and focus on other crops that stood a better chance in the drought.

He thought rain might come and save those 75 acres, but it didn’t and days of triple-digit heat sucked the remaining moisture from the soil. McGee walked recently through rows of sunbaked and stunted stalks, one of thousands of farmers counting his losses amid record heat and drought this year.

The drought has spread over much of the southern U.S., leaving Oklahoma the driest it has been since the 1930s and setting records from Louisiana to New Mexico. But the situation is especially severe in Texas, which trails only California in agricultural productivity.

McGee is still watering another variety of corn, cotton and sorghum but the loss of nearly one-sixth of his acres after spending so much on irrigation weighs on him.

“Kind of depressing,” the 34-year-old farmer said. “You use that much of a resource and nothing to show for it. This year, no matter what you do, it’s not quite enough.” Continue reading ‘Severe drought in Texas could result in record losses in nation’s No. 2 agriculture state’