Drought cripples southern US farms

Source: Financial Times

Half of Dahlen Hancock’s cotton fields are dead. The other half are clinging to life.

The 5,800 acres he farms near Lubbock, Texas, are half irrigated and half at the mercy of the clouds. And the past nine months have been the driest in Texas on record. The Lone Star state is at the epicentre of a once-in-a-generation drought stretching from Arizona to Florida. The US’s southern underbelly is scorched like meat on a grill.

The drought has spawned wildfires, turning grasslands to ash. In Texas, the leading cotton producer in the US, 59 per cent of the cotton crop is in poor condition or worse. Harvests of hard winter wheat, prized for yeasted breads, have plummeted in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas as yields and acreage contracted. Ranchers cannot feed their cattle on parched pastures.

Mr Hancock, a fourth-generation farmer, says the cotton seeds he planted on his 3,000 dryland acres never germinated. “All I see is dry, barren farmland. The weeds really haven’t even grown,” he says.

Read more: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dc615ace-b056-11e0-a5a7-00144feab49a.html#axzz1SSLMwFqD

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Well, if we go by Rick Perry's philosophy, there can be only one explanation for what's happening:

God is punishing Red States.

I'm certain that sometime after Perry falls to his knees, or burns a sheep (or Unitarian), it'll rain in Texas.

Then he can cite the amazing power of the Gaw-duh of Texas and enter the presidential race.

He could give corporations more tax breaks. See, problem solved.

And now he thinks he can fix the country with a big prayer gathering? LOL! A stadium of people talking to themselves will do nothing but make Rick Perry feel like he is Jesus! Which I think he already sees himself as some kind of modern day prophet!

and not the commentary here.

http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html

Although your story link is for subscribers only. Free or pay, that limits the number of people that are going to look at it for the rest of the story...

And only one solution...

You're on your own. So pray.



Of course all those big empty states who complain about the government dole and want to have as little government as possible, like TX, will be getting bundles of Fed Help. Paid for by the populated coastal states.

The odds are that most of the affected farmers listen religiously to The Oxycontin King, $arah Grifter, and the rest of the anti-American shills on their radios & TV. Thus they hear, day after day, denials of climate change. So, they are living the hipster doofus' dream of having a totally ironic life. Their final irony will be when they drop over dead, with the AM radio playing in the background, blaming the "evil libs!" for all their problems.

That is, the failing of all those crops due to an excessive drought (one that's been going on in Texas, anyway, as far back as 1996) is going to have a big impact on the economy as a whole.

I really wish y'all would look at the big picture for once instead of just the political angle...

Who said I was only looking at the political angle. Speaking only for myself, I am certainly aware of the social, the economic, the long-term, and the near-term effects of the drought. In my post I merely chose one of the more "interesting" angles to comment on.

More like at the other 90% of the posts so far on this thread. This is a disaster for the country. I could care less what Perry and company do with regards to "praying it away." That's not the topic of the story.

I certainly HOPE that is true,
but my FEAR is that this is the New Normal.
If so,
we are in real trouble.

A Jobless Recovery coupled to another Dust Bowl,
and a government that is telling us to eat our Austerity Peas.

I happened to mis-tune the radio this morning, got a right-wing noise channel, and heard some of the crap they shovel. I couldn't take it after about 10 minutes, but in that time span there was nothing about current affairs or their causes. Just lots and lots of strawman-building, and the Blame The Lib game.

in the story as if they are trying to tell people that this is just like it has always been. I am going to be 70 years this year - I have never seen much of what is happening today. I suspect that most people telling us about weather do not have the education needed to understand the problems so they refuse to go out on the limb for climate change. What they do not understand is that they may be on the limb that is being cut off next.

The only time the MSM & the right-wing media (AKA, the MSM) ever comment about the connection between weather, climate, and man-made global warming is when it snows a lot and this gives them a chance to pooh-pooh it.

I wonder if the Oxycontin Drug Abuse King or any of the other anti-American corporate shills are making comments about the hot weather lately... D'OH! :sarcasm:

Climate change is moving the arid bands that sit astride the equator and take in the North African deserts further up and down. That's going to hit hard around the globe.

I share you sentiment completely. I hope that its an abnormal event but fear its the new normal. These farmers should maybe try new kinds of crops, like (as I posted downthread...) hemp.

With everything else happening, and the nearly global shift towards the Authoritarian Right its a perfect storm. During the energy crisis it was the hippies, leftists and free-thinkers in general who move alternative energy sources forward.

:sarcasm:

Wouldn't hemp that is suited to growing in Afghanistan be very well suited to growing in these conditions? I've looked at YouTube videos shot by soldiers in Afghanistan and the land they are traversing is very dry and barren but has these big fields of hemp(cannabis in this case) growing too.

Cotton is a really fussy crop that needs lots of water and pesticides. Cotton cloth is inferior to hemp cloth and hemp makes the most nutritious seeds in the plant kingdom.

Hemp FTW.

Also, maybe now is a good time to stock up on Jeans?

any location near 30 degrees latitude will have reduced rainfall and prolonged droughts

Prayer will do no good

yup

To condemn these southern states to hellfire and damnation like they did Japan with its earthquake and New Orleans with Katrina because obviously God must be judging them for their terrible sins.


(course that might slow down grandma sending brother pat her SS check every month to buy diamond mines) hmmm...............