Tag: climate change

August 21, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Food riots predicted over US crop failure

The world is on the brink of a food “catastrophe” caused by the worst US drought in 50 years, and misguided government biofuel policy will exacerbate the perilous situation, scientists and activists warn.

When food prices spike and people go hungry, violence soon follows, they say. Riots caused by food shortages – similar to those of 2007-08 in countries like Bangladesh, Haiti, the Philippines and Burkina Faso among others – may be on the horizon, threatening social stability in impoverished nations that rely on US corn imports.

This summer’s devastating drought has scorched much of the mid-western United States – the world’s bread basket.

Crops such as corn, wheat, and soy have been decimated by high temperatures and little rain. Grain prices have skyrocketed and concerns abound the resulting higher food prices will hit the world’s poor the hardest – sparking violent demonstrations.

Early dryness in Russia’s wheat growing season, light monsoon rains in India, and drought in Africa’s Sahel region, combined with America’s lost crop, mean a perfect storm is on the horizon.

Surging food prices could kick off food riots similar to those in 2008 and 2010, Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam, president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, told Al Jazeera.

“Recent droughts in the mid-western United States threaten to cause global catastrophe,” said Bar-Yam, whose institute uses computer models to identify global trends.

Hopes were high in May of a bumper corn crop this year, but sizzling temperatures in June and July scuttled those predictions.

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March 22, 2012 General Ag News and Notes, Globel Warming Post a Comment

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

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,”

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March 13, 2012 General Ag News and Notes Post a Comment

Europe’s water resources ‘under pressure’

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.

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January 25, 2012 General Ag News and Notes, Globel Warming Post a Comment

Plant hardiness map revealed

The first daffodils have crept into flower and the snowdrops have peaked already. If you think winters aren’t what they used to be, you’re not alone.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday released a plant hardiness zone map of the nation that shows generally warmer winter low temperatures than the department’s previous map from 1990.

The new map divides the country into 13 zones arranged by minimum winter temperatures, in 10-degree increments. Among the shifts: The District and most of Virginia and Maryland are squarely in the relative balm of Zone 7. Specifically, they fall in the warmer half of Zone 7 where the mercury, on average, doesn’t go below 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Previously recorded in southeastern coastal Virginia, this zone now defines the coastal communities of the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River.

The colder Zone 6, which once embraced the Piedmont area and included much of Fairfax and Montgomery counties, is now pushed west of the Blue Ridge.

“The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States,” said Kim Kaplan, of the Agricultural Research Service.

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May 14, 2011 General Ag News and Notes, Globel Warming Post a Comment

8.5 million trees planted in campaign

PETALING JAYA – MORE than 8.5 million trees have been planted in Malaysia as of March, said Natural Resources and Environment Minister Datuk Douglas Uggah Embas.

The planting was part of a nationwide Green the Earth: One Citizen, One Tree campaign that was launched in April last year to fight global warming and to mitigate climate change.

A total of 26 million trees are expected to be planted by 2014.

On Saturday, Douglas Uggah joined about 200 volunteers including university students to plant 1,800 seedlings at the Ayer Hitam Forest reserve in Puchong.

The campaign carried out under the ExxonMobil’s 2011 Community Projects programme started two years ago and its goal is to plant a total of 5,000 trees at the forest reserve by 2012. — THE STAR/ANN

8.5 million trees planted in campaign

May 9, 2011 General Ag News and Notes, Globel Warming Post a Comment

Trees provide natural record of El Niño trends

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.

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