Tag Archive for 'drought'

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’

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Wild donkeys to be taken from Hawaii to California

Published on August 5, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes, Invasive Species and Livestock.


Home > Breaking News > World > Story
Aug 6, 2011
Wild donkeys to be taken from Hawaii to California

HONOLULU – IN AN effort to control Hawaii’s wild donkey population, about 100 of them are being taken to California.

KITV reports the Humane Society of the United States is planning to remove the donkeys on a chartered plane next month.

Hawaii Humane Society state director Inga Gibson says they will go to animal sanctuaries.

Drought conditions led the donkeys from the highlands into a populated area in search of water. Donkeys were appearing near the highway and a school.

The Humane Society and a local veterinarian have been trapping and sterilising the animals. At the end of the month, a clinic is to be set up at a ranch to castrate captured male donkeys.

Ms Gibson says donors are to help with costs of the chartered flight. — AP

Wild donkeys to be taken from Hawaii to California

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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’

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How El Paso is beating the worst drought in a generation

Published on June 27, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.


When Ed Archuleta first arrived in El Paso to manage the local water authority, the cotton barons and cattle men who run this desert city had a blunt message for him. This is Texas, they told him. We don’t do conservation.

It’s a good thing Archuleta didn’t listen. As a record drought scorched America’s south-west this spring, El Paso went 119 days without rain. The Rio Grande, which forms the border with Mexico, shrunk into its banks. An hour’s drive out of town, ranchers sold off their cattle so they wouldn’t have to watch them die.

Archuleta, in his office overlooking a long seam of strip malls, saw no reason for panic – even though, in his words, the amount of precipitation in the first rain this year was about as much as someone spitting on a water gauge.

“We’re going to be fine this summer,” he said. “We’re basically drought-proof.”

The city will be fine next year too, even if it doesn’t rain, and even if the Rio Grande stays low. “We can handle drought next year. Theoretically, even if we have no water in the river, even if there wasn’t a single drop of water coming from the river, we could make it through the summer,” Continue reading ‘How El Paso is beating the worst drought in a generation’

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China issues alert as Yangtze River braces for more rain

Published on June 12, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.


China issued a “level three” alert as the medium-to-lower reaches of the Yangtze River braced for more heavy rain, the China Meteorological Administration said on its website today.

Heavy downpours, including storms and torrential rain in some areas, will affect parts of Jiangsu, Hunan, Zhejiang, Anhui and Hubei provinces as early as tomorrow, the forecaster said. Landslides, floods and mudslides may occur as the soil becomes loose after a recent drought, it said.

Flooding has killed 94 people along the medium-to-lower reaches of the Yangtze River this month, with another 78 people missing, according to a China National Radio report yesterday. The region had previously suffered from a drought. Continue reading ‘China issues alert as Yangtze River braces for more rain’

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China drought fuels food price increases

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


SHANGHAI – THE impacts of China’s worst drought in 50 years have been served up on the nation’s dining tables as the price of rice and vegetables from drought-hit provinces have skyrocketed.

The average price of staple foods in 50 cities has increased significantly, and the price of some leaf vegetables has jumped 16 per cent in one month, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

Decreased production because of the drought has been cited as the major reason for price increases, and the prices of rice and vegetables may not drop soon, according to a report by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Statistics from the Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters show that an area of nearly 7 million hectares of arable land has been affected by the drought, with Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces most seriously affected.

‘I didn’t buy many leaf vegetables in the last week because the price is getting crazy,’ said Zhang Weirong, a 67-year-old Shanghai resident. ‘Cabbage used to be as cheap as paper, and for 5 yuan (95 cents) you would get too many cabbages to carry home,’ she said.

She has had to switch to melons and pumpkins, which are getting cheaper this year. She also changed from eating porridge for breakfast to noodles. ‘My grandson said he doesn’t like the dishes I cook these days, but what else can I do?’ she said. — CHINA DAILY/ANN

China drought fuels food price increases

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Yangtze shipping halted

Published on May 14, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.


Drought on China’s Yangtze river has led to historically low levels that have forced authorities to halt shipping on the nation’s longest waterway.It was barely three meters near Wuhan, the Chang Jiang Waterway Bureau said yesterday.

A day earlier, the bureau closed a 228-kilometer stretch above Wuhan to sea-going vessels, fearing ships would become stuck on the bottom.

Further up the river, the massive Three Gorges Dam, the world’s biggest hydroelectric project, has discharged more water to alleviate the drought conditions down river.

It was not immediately clear if the measures would be effective as the drought in areas around the middle reaches has levels at the lowest point in five decades, the China Daily said.

At least two ships have just been stranded, with that part of the river cut to an average width of about 150 meters.

According to Wang Jingquan of the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee, slowing the Yangtze with the controversial Three Gorges Dam has aggravated the drought by diverting flow to the lower reaches.

The 6,300-kilometer Yangtze is indispensable to the economies of many cities along its route.

Yangtze shipping halted – The Standard

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Trees provide natural record of El Niño trends

Published on May 9, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Globel Warming.


Studying treering records from the southwestern United States, University of Hawaii scientists have helped assemble a 1,100-year historical picture of the climate phenomenon known as El Niño, offering an avenue to understanding how weather patterns could change in a warming world.

El Niño, associated with warmer than usual sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific, typically produces a wide array of violent weather, including more rain and intense storms in some areas, less rain in others. The massive El Niño of 1997-98, for instance, caused flooding and landslides in Northern California, drought and famine in Bangladesh and drought and forest fires in the Philippines; 2,100 people died worldwide.

UH scientist Jinbao Li said by email that the record implies that warmer oceans will lead to more severe El Niños and the opposite phenomena, La Niñas, and more extreme climate conditions around the globe. But a final verdict awaits better climate models, he said.

Formally known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, the phenomenon also brings rainy winters to the U.S. Southwest, where tree rings are wide in wet years and narrow in dry years.

UH researchers Li, Shang-Ping Xie, Fei Lui and Jian Ma analyzed the tree-ring records available in a database called the North American Drought Atlas and found that the results correlated closely with the 150-year sea surface temperature records in the tropical Pacific. Continue reading ‘Trees provide natural record of El Niño trends’

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Chocolate is locally grown product

Published on March 15, 2011 in Cacao, Chocolate and General Ag News and Notes.


Bob and Pam Cooper acquired more than 1,800 cacao trees in Holualoa over a decade ago and established the Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory. They’ve been processing 100 percent Hawaii-grown cacao into chocolate products ever since. Bob also grows and sells cacao trees, encouraging others to grow this valuable crop. West Hawaii now has many cacao growers and several budding artisanal chocolate makers.

Cacao originated in the Amazon and Orinoco River basins of Ecuador and Brazil, and has been cultivated in Central and South America for thousands of years. Theobroma, the genus of the cacao tree, translates to “food of the gods” and the resulting chocolate was once reserved solely for the pleasure of Aztec kings.

Today, cacao growing and chocolate making is a global industry, but with more local growers and those making chocolate with locally grown ingredients, localvores can satisfy their chocolate urge with a reduced carbon footprint.

Cacao is a tropical rain forest tree and thrives in areas with temperatures above 50 degrees and about 60 inches of annual rainfall or good irrigation. It is especially well-suited to areas in Kona that get a cool afternoon cloud cover. You might consider adding a few cacao trees, if your growing conditions are suitable. Continue reading ‘Chocolate is locally grown product’

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Send in the Fronds

Published on March 9, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes.


THE Archbishop John Ireland used to pray in my kitchen — or so the neighbors say. Long before it was my attic apartment, this space was reportedly his home chapel in St. Paul, Minn.

A giant of American Catholicism in the early 20th century, Archbishop Ireland gave the Twin Cities a pair of monumental churches, the Basilica of St. Mary and the Cathedral of Saint Paul. He left me something humbler: a third-floor walk-up with sloping bead board ceilings and dormer windows.

These cubbies, carved into the wainscoting, look as if they were meant to display something. But what? A domed canary cage? A bust of St. Polycarp, patron saint of earache sufferers?

The other day, I experienced something like an epiphany. What the kitchen needed was a hanging fern.

A few decades ago, the plant to buy would have been obvious: a Boston fern. Anyone would recognize Nephrolepis exaltata. It’s the ferny-looking fern — the one with the long, shaggy ruffles of greenery, cascading like a fondue fountain.

The Boston fern is not without its merits, noted Tom Stuart, proprietor of the Hardy Fern Library, an online taxonomical guide.

“There’s almost no way to kill a Boston fern,” Continue reading ‘Send in the Fronds’

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Study Links Rise in Rain and Snow to Human Actions

Published on February 16, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Globel Warming.


An increase in heavy precipitation that has afflicted many countries is at least partly a consequence of human influence on the atmosphere, climate scientists reported in a new study.

In the first major paper of its kind, the researchers used elaborate computer programs that simulate the climate to analyze whether the rise in severe rainstorms, heavy snowfalls and similar events could be explained by natural variability in the atmosphere. They found that it could not, and that the increase made sense only when the computers factored in the effects of greenhouse gases released by human activities like the burning of fossil fuels.

As reflected in previous studies, the likelihood of extreme precipitation on any given day rose by about 7 percent over the last half of the 20th century, at least for the land areas of the Northern Hemisphere for which sufficient figures are available to do an analysis.

The principal finding of the new study is “that this 7 percent is well outside the bounds of natural variability,” said Francis W. Zwiers, a Canadian climate scientist who took part in the research. Continue reading ‘Study Links Rise in Rain and Snow to Human Actions’

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U.N. warns China drought could pressure wheat prices

Published on February 8, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.


A record drought in China’s major wheat producing areas threatens to push world food prices beyond their current high level, the United Nations warned in a report Tuesday, adding to growing concern about how the rising cost of food is affecting the poor around the globe.

China, the world’s largest wheat producer, consumes almost all of what it grows and keeps roughly 55 million tons in reserve. But the prospect of a failed winter wheat crop might prompt the country to import grain on a scale that could put further stress on world prices, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned.

The FAO’s world food price index, a composite indicator of the cost of a basket of goods, is at its highest level since it was introduced in 1990. Wheat prices have roughly doubled since mid-2010, according to International Monetary Fund data.

Rainfall has been more than 30 percent below normal since October across five northern provinces that account for about two-thirds of Chinese wheat production, the FAO reported. Shandong province, China’s second-largest wheat-growing area, has had less than half an inch of rain since September and is heading for its worst drought in 200 years, according to reports from China’s official news agency. Continue reading ‘U.N. warns China drought could pressure wheat prices’

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Recent rainfall eases drought

Published on January 8, 2011 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.


Downpours have ended drought conditions on Oahu and Kauai, but the suffering continues for farmers and ranchers on other islands

Oahu and Kauai are no longer officially in drought conditions after last month’s heavy rain, the National Weather Service said.

But farmers and ranchers are still suffering, especially those on Maui, Molokai and the Big Island, where some ranchers are reportedly still hauling water to support their livestock.

National Weather Service hydrologist Kevin Kodama said “conditions on the leeward side of the Big Island, which is a dry area normally, improved slightly.”

However, last month’s rainfall “was not enough since it occurred over a short period of time,” too short to eliminate the drought conditions there.

The report issued by the Weather Service is just one of several steps that must be met before the emergency drought declaration issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is lifted. The emergency declaration, which made farmers and ranchers eligible for emergency loans and other payments, was issued for the Big Island in 2006, Maui and Molokai in 2007 and Kauai and Oahu last January.

“It’s good news,” said Diane Ley, state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency.

However, it will be several years before the state’s pasture lands recover from the past four years of drought conditions. Continue reading ‘Recent rainfall eases drought’

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Sweet Smell of Success

Published on December 3, 2010 in General Ag News and Notes and Sugar Cane.


The rain came down. The price went up, and Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. finished the year with a much improved crop.

The final raw sugar shipment was loaded at Kahului Harbor’s Pier One on Wednesday and Thursday.

The harvest was just shy of 172,000 tons, much better than the 127,000 tons in 2009, but well short of the 200,000 tons the plantation can make in a good year.

In a telephone interview from New York on Thursday, HC&S General Manager Chris Benjamin said that although there is still “a ways to go,” the improved crop and better world prices take the immediate pressure off the plantation.

A year ago, after experiencing heavy losses attributed to a long drought, the directors of Alexander & Baldwin took a hard look at HC&S. The 37,000-acre plantation was the origin of the A&B conglomerate, but today it accounts for only about 7 percent of revenues.

The board approved continuation of the business only until the end of this year, pending improved results.

Financial results won’t be published until next year, but Benjamin said he believes that the board is already satisfied that the operation is on the right track.

At this week’s price of nearly 40 cents per pound of raw sugar (in New York), the crop would be worth more than $130 million, not counting molasses and electricity byproduct revenue, plus the premium for the part of the crop sold as specialty sugars. Continue reading ‘Sweet Smell of Success’

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An Almanac of Extreme Weather

Published on November 28, 2010 in General Ag News and Notes, Globel Warming and Vegtables.


THE news from this Midwestern farm is not good. The past four years of heavy rains and flash flooding here in southern Minnesota have left me worried about the future of agriculture in America’s grain belt. For some time computer models of climate change have been predicting just these kinds of weather patterns, but seeing them unfold on our farm has been harrowing nonetheless.

My family and I produce vegetables, hay and grain on 250 acres in one of the richest agricultural areas in the world. While our farm is not large by modern standards, its roots are deep in this region; my great-grandfather homesteaded about 80 miles from here in the late 1800s.

He passed on a keen sensitivity to climate. His memoirs, self-published in the wake of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, describe tornadoes, droughts and other extreme weather. But even he would be surprised by the erratic weather we have experienced in the last decade.

In August 2007, a series of storms produced a breathtaking 23 inches of rain in 36 hours. The flooding that followed essentially erased our farm from the map. Continue reading ‘An Almanac of Extreme Weather’

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Rain does little to ease drought

Published on November 22, 2010 in General Ag News and Notes and Water.


The statewide drought appears to be easing as cooler La Nina conditions bring more rain to Hawaii, according to the National Weather Service.

But farmers and ranchers said a protracted amount of rain is needed before they can recover from several years of extremely dry conditions.

Some areas, such as southwestern Kauai and leeward sections of the Big Island and Maui, did not receive significant rainfall in October, continuing extreme drought conditions, National Weather Service officials said Friday.

Late Thursday, thunderstorms along with lightning passed by Hawaii, and most of the anticipated heavy rainfall missed the islands.

The weather service reported 0.15 inches of rain Thursday at Honolulu Airport and 0.6 inches at Lihue Airport but none for airports in Hilo and Kahului.

In October, while many places reported less than normal rainfall, some areas exceeded their normal monthly average, including Haiku on Maui with 5.71 inches — 12 percent above normal — and Honaunau on the Big Island with 5.54 inches of rain, 7 percent above normal. Continue reading ‘Rain does little to ease drought’

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