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An “All-Out Blizzard” That Is “Unheard Of For October” Is About To Hit Farms In The Midwest With Up To 2 Feet Of Snow
An “All-Out Blizzard” That Is “Unheard Of For October” Is About To Hit Farms In The Midwest With Up To 2 Feet Of Snow
Farmers in the middle of the country are about to get hit by what could potentially be the worst October blizzard in U.S. history. According to USA Today, “the massive size and intensity of this snowstorm is unheard of for October”. In other words, we have never seen anything like this in the month of October ever before. Such a storm would have been disastrous enough in a normal year, but this has definitely not been a normal year for Midwest farmers. As I detailed extensively in previous articles, endless rain and horrific flooding made planting season a complete and utter nightmare for many Midwest farmers this year. Millions of acres did not get planted at all, and planting was seriously delayed on tens of millions of other acres. As a result, corn, soybeans and other crops are simply not ready to be harvested in many parts of the Midwest, and now an unprecedented winter storm is barreling directly toward our heartland.
This is a very, very serious situation. Normally, most corn in the Dakotas and Minnesota is considered to be “mature” by now, but this year we are facing a completely different scenario.
According to the latest USDA Crop Progress Report, only 22 percent of the corn in North Dakota is considered to be “mature” at this point…
Many farmers continue to wait on the sidelines to get into the fields. With freezing temperatures, heavy snowfall, and high winds set to hit the northern Plains this week, the corn in North Dakota is only 22% mature vs. a 75% five-year average, according to Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report.
Also, South Dakota corn is rated 36% mature vs. an 80% five-year average. Minnesota farmers have a corn crop that is just 39% mature vs. an 83% five-year average.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Insect Apocalypse:” US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic To Insects Than 25 Years Ago
“Insect Apocalypse:” US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic To Insects Than 25 Years Ago
A new study shows how “insect apocalypse” is unfolding across America’s farmland since neonicotinoid pesticides were introduced several decades ago.
Researchers found that farmland across the country is 48 times more toxic to insect life than 25 years ago, and neonicotinoid pesticides account for a large majority of the increase in toxicity.
“It is alarming that US agriculture has become so much more toxic to insect life in the past two decades,” said Kendra Klein, Ph.D., study co-author and senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth.
“We need to phase out neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees and other insects that are critical to biodiversity and the farms that feed us.”
Published in the journal PLOS ONE on Tuesday, the new study is a complete assessment of pesticide usage on farmland in the US, is the first study in the world to quantify how dangerous fields have become for insects by providing YoY changes in toxicity levels of the soil.
The increased toxic load measured in the study could explain why insect populations are collapsing in the US.
Klein said neonicotinoids are more toxic for insects than traditional pesticides and are widely used by farmers. These dangerous chemicals can remain in the soil for months to years after one application.
“Congress must pass the Saving America’s Pollinators Act to ban neonicotinoids,” said Klein.
“In addition, we need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it.”
The study suggests neonicotinoids are a major factor in the recent decline of insects, along with climate change and habitat destruction, leading scientist to warn of an “insect apocalypse.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Our Veggie Gardens Won’t Feed us in a Real Crisis
Our Veggie Gardens Won’t Feed us in a Real Crisis
Massive flooding and heavier than normal precipitation across the US Midwest this year delayed or entirely prevented the planting of many crops. The situation was sufficiently widespread that it was visible from space. The trouble isn’t over yet: Hotter-than-normal temperatures predicted to follow could adversely affect corn pollination. Projections of lower yields have already stimulated higher prices in UN grain indexes and US ethanol. Additionally, the USDA is expecting harvests to be of inferior quality. Furthermore, the effects of this year could bleed into 2020; late planting leads to late harvesting which delays fall tilling, potentially until next spring, when who knows what Mother Nature will deliver.
Accuweather’s characterization of this as a “one-of-a-kind growing season” is literally true only in terms of its exact circumstances (given increasingly chaotic events) but not in its intensity (which will surely be exceeded). Prudence would dictate that we heed this year’s events as a warning and get serious about making preparations for worse years. Literal cycles of “feast or famine” have marked agriculture since its birth and sooner or later we will experience significant shortages here in the US, if not from the weather, than from war or lack of resources.
The Midwest floods and their possible repercussions for the food supply got some attention in the news (though not enough). One of the most common suggestions I saw on social media was: “Plant a garden!”
If only it were that simple.
I used to be a small-scale organic farmer so take it from me: totally feeding yourself from your own efforts is very, very challenging. Though some friends and I tried over multiple seasons, we never succeeded, or even came anywhere close.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Total Catastrophe For U.S. Corn Production: Only 30% Of U.S. Corn Fields Have Been Planted – 5 Year Average Is 66%
Total Catastrophe For U.S. Corn Production: Only 30% Of U.S. Corn Fields Have Been Planted – 5 Year Average Is 66%
2019 is turning out to be a nightmare that never ends for the agriculture industry. Thanks to endless rain and unprecedented flooding, fields all over the middle part of the country are absolutely soaked right now, and this has prevented many farmers from getting their crops in the ground. I knew that this was a problem, but when I heard that only 30 percent of U.S. corn fields had been planted as of Sunday, I had a really hard time believing it. But it turns out that number is 100 percent accurate. And at this point corn farmers are up against a wall because crop insurance final planting dates have either already passed or are coming up very quickly. In addition, for every day after May 15th that corn is not in the ground, farmers lose approximately 2 percent of their yield. Unfortunately, more rain is on the way, and it looks like thousands of corn farmers will not be able to plant corn at all this year. It is no exaggeration to say that what we are facing is a true national catastrophe.
According to the Department of Agriculture, over the past five years an average of 66 percent of all corn fields were already planted by now…
U.S. farmers seeded 30% of the U.S. 2019 corn crop by Sunday, the government said, lagging the five-year average of 66%. The soybean crop was 9% planted, behind the five-year average of 29%.
Soybean farmers have more time to recover, but they are facing a unique problem of their own which we will talk about later in the article.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Are we Heading into a Food Shortage?
Are we Heading into a Food Shortage?
COMMENT: Mr. Armstrong, I find it really distasteful that you laid out events well in advance and then everyone copies you without ever giving you credit. There are articles now appearing about the coming food shortage. The degree of plagiarism is unbelievable. It must be dishearting. I certainly begin to distrust these people and organizations for they certainly even know who you are.
LMS
REPLY: That is life. They are trying to sell something so they have to pretend to do the research to make money by getting people to read. The flooding wiped out stockpiles. Now the planting season is already behind on schedule because of the weather. As I have warned, the computer has been forecasting colder winters and shorter-summers. The planting season will decline and thus the danger of a serious food shortage as we head into 2024.
I previously wrote about the soaring bankruptcies among farmers and combine this with the flooding that continues, I believe the computer will be on point. I also wrote about how this year, the Russian wheat crop failed has failed because of the bitter cold with even April coming in as the coldest in more than 140 years. To make matters worse, our computer warns that the weather will not improve. The next 4 years will put even more financial pressure farmers. Even in Australia, the drought is sending the “roos” invading the cities and they like to feed precisely during Rush Hour. The drought is so bad in Australia, that animals are dying for lack of feed crops.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
UK climate emergency is official policy
UK climate emergency is official policy
Heathrow’s expansion is now in question. Image: By J Patrick Fischer, via Wikimedia Commons
Major changes in the government’s policy on fossil fuels will be vital to tackling the UK climate emergency that Parliament has recognised.
LONDON, 3 May, 2019 − The United Kingdom has taken a potentially momentous policy decision: it says there is a UK climate emergency.
On 1 May British members of Parliament (MPs) became the world’s first national legislature to declare a formal climate and environment emergency, saying they hoped they could work with like-minded countries across the world to take action to avoid more than 1.5°C of global warming.
No-one yet knows what will be the practical result of the resolution proposed by Jeremy Corbyn, the Opposition Labour leader, but UK politicians were under pressure to act following a series of high-profile strikes by school students in recent months and demonstrations by a new climate protest organisation, Extinction Rebellion (XR), whose supporters closed roads in the centre of London for a week.
The Conservative government ordered its MPs not to oppose the Labour resolution, and it was passed without a vote.
Zero carbon by 2050
Hours after the MPs’ decision, a long-awaited detailed report by the government’s official advisors, the Committee on Climate Change, was published. It recommends cutting the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. The current target is 80%.
The report says the government should accept the new target immediately, pass it into law in the next few months and begin to implement policies to achieve it. The committee says that will mean the end of petrol and diesel cars on British roads, a cut in meat consumption, an end to gas boilers for heating buildings, planting 1.5 billion trees to store carbon, a vast increase in renewable energy, and many other measures.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Post-Brexit Farming, Glyphosate and GMOs
Post-Brexit Farming, Glyphosate and GMOs
The following is an edited and abridged version of an open letter recently sent by Dr Rosemary Mason to Michael Gove, the British Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The full version containing relevant citations and additional data and information may be accessed here.
You can also find on the site linked to all of Rosemary Mason’s previous work outlining the devastating impact of glyphosate and modern farming practices which remain in place due to the well-documented subversion of science and the corruption of governments and regulatory bodies by industry interests.
It seems likely that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could mean more of the same and lead to the introduction of GM crops in the UK alongside the lowering of standards for the use of biocides in agriculture. Sainsbury Laboratory already has plans for a new open air field trial of GM potatoes on farms in Suffolk and Cambridge.
Below, Dr Mason lays out her concerns to Mr Gove.
***
Dear Michael Gove,
I am surprised to learn that from the huge number of scientists employed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Rothamsted Research (research institute involved in developing and testing GM crops) that not one of them has read the new book by Caius Rommens, former team leader at Monsanto. He helped create GM potatoes and has retracted his research as he explains in the book ‘Pandora’s Potatoes: The Worst GMOs’.
Professor Jonathan Jones, group leader for the Sainsbury Laboratory has worked for Monsanto in the past, so he has massive conflicts of interest.
It all shows an ignorance beyond belief!
In an interview with Sustainable Pulse, Caius Rommens has revealed the hidden dangers of the GMO potatoes he created:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Using manure for fertilizer in the future – it won’t be easy
Using manure for fertilizer in the future – it won’t be easy
Animals produce 44 times more manure than humans in the U.S.
Preface. At John Jeavons Biointensive workshop back in 2003, I learned that phosphorous is limited and mostly being lost to oceans and other waterways after exiting sewage treatment plants. He said it can be dangerous to use human manure without proper handling, and wasn’t going to cover this at the workshop, but to keep it in mind for the future.
Modern fertilizers made with the Nobel-prizing winning method of using natural gas as feedstock and energy source can increase crop production up to 5 times, but at a tremendous cost of poor soil health and pollution (see Peak soil). Fossil fuels will inevitably decline some day, and force us back to organic agriculture and using crop wastes, animal and human manure again.
Below are excerpts from three sources.
The first is about North Korea. Despite tremendous efforts to use all manure, this country is a barren, destroyed landscape that can grow little food, which McKenna describes here: Inside North Korea’s Environmental Collapse.
The second section describes what it was like to live over a century ago when human and animal manure was routinely collected.
The third Below is a NewScientist book review of The Wastewater Gardener: Preserving the planet, one flush at a time by Mark Nelson.
Park, Y. 2015. In order to live: A North Korean girl’s journey to freedom. Penguin.
“One of the big problems in North Korea was a fertilizer shortage. When the economy collapsed in the 1990s, the Soviet Union stopped sending fertilizer to us and our own factories stopped producing it. Whatever was donated from other countries couldn’t get to the farms because the transportation system had also broken down. this led to crop failures that made the famine even worse.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The day the Earth’s climate went berserk
The day the Earth’s climate went berserk
The caldera (collapsed crater) of Mt Tambora. Image: By Jialiang Gao (peace-on-earth.org), via Wikimedia Commons.
The day in 1815 when the world’s climate went berserk was only the start of months and years of global climate disruption and social unrest.
LONDON, 19 March, 2019 − If you had been in what were then called the Dutch East Indies on 10 April 1815, the day would have been etched indelibly on your memory: it was the day the global climate went berserk.
Many parts of the world are already feeling the effects of a changing climate. Island nations in the Pacific are seeing their lands eaten away by rising sea levels.
Whole communities of people in Arctic regions are threatened by rapidly expanding ice melt. The foundations of houses are being swept away. Traditional hunting grounds are being lost.
Wolfgang Behringer is a climate historian who seeks to draw parallels between what is going on now and events long ago. In particular Behringer, a professor of early modern history at Saarland University in Germany, looks at how changes in climate can influence and shape events – political, economic and social.
In a new book he focuses on the 1815 volcanic explosion of Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia. The eruption still rates as the largest in human history; the cloud that burst from the volcano reached a height of 45 kilometres.
“Apparently minor changes in temperature and humidity suffice to shake up entrenched ecosystems, but above all entrenched agricultural systems”
Many thousands of people were killed on Sumbawa and adjoining islands, including Lombok and Bali. Dust clouds from Tambora were swept around the globe; the world’s climate went berserk, says Behringer.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Deconstructing the 3 biggest LIES that attack organic farming
Deconstructing the 3 biggest LIES that attack organic farming
(Natural News) Oh yes they did. There’s now a so-called “study” that’s been done which supposedly determined that organic farming creates a much bigger carbon footprint that torques up “global warming” more than ever. Yes, old faithful US News has regurgitated a chunk of claims published in the International Journal of Science, and somebody has to set the record straight.
If you read the entire review of the “study” and the study itself, you can feel the GMO community grasping for anything to save face, especially in the midst of a tsunami of Bayer/Monsanto lawsuits (of which people are winning huge payouts) regarding glyphosate poisoning from using Roundup. Folks, this is the same weed killer used on the inside and out (think genetic engineering here and “Roundup Ready”) of 90 percent of U.S. corn, soy, canola, cottonseed, beets, alfalfa, and the list goes on.
The whole insidious anti-organic industry needs a big PR win and fast, so they’re jumping on the “climate change” bandwagon and spewing infested lies about organic farming. It’s time to deconstruct the biggest ones and expose the fraudulent “news” updates.
DEBUNKED: The 3 “consensus” lies about organic farming that true science completely tears apart
#1. “Organic food is worse for the climate than non-organic food”
Big lie. First off, non-organic food usually means chemical-based fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides are doused on the farms by crop dusters and spread by tractor “boom” sprayers that spray millions of gallons of unsustainable, climate-destroying bug killer and weed killer over millions of acres. And that comes only after the scientists modify the crop seeds in a laboratory with the same chemical genes from the poisonous pesticides.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why did local go global?
Why did local go global?
When discussing the food system, I find that few seem to understand why the system is like it is. Some discuss the system in a way where it sounds like Big, Bad and Ugly corporations made the system into what it is today, and all we have to do is to decide that we want a local food system instead. But that view is underestimating the drivers of the economy. My own experiences in food processing and farming has made me understand that the workings of competition (“the market”) is the main factor influencing how and where production takes place.
Some thirtyfive years ago, the farm where I lived, Torfolk, wanted to pursue the value addition of local resources and we started making jam out of local berries. First we picked lingonberries – a North European berry similar to cranberries – ourselves in the forest. But quite soon we reverted to buying from pickers. But the buckets were full of bad berries, leaves, twigs and droppings from roe deer so we had to spend a lot of time cleaning them. We converted an old grain cleaning machine, but when the berries were really ripe and soft, they were mashed inside the machine, and it was impossible to get them clean. In addition, one of us got an involuntary exotic haircut, when leaning too close to the fan of the cleaner. Next solution was to buy from a local berry trader who had a purposely built lingonberry cleaner. But also with this one we had quality problems and ended up having to pick many leaves by ourselves. In addition, as most berry pickers know, the berries don’t grow equally well every year, there is frost in the florescence, it is too dry, too rainy or there is a pest, so we could not rely on the local berries alone. And neither could the local berry cleaning operation, so it closed down.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Not-So-Superfood? Pesticide Residue Found In 70% Of US Produce & 92% Of Kale
Not-So-Superfood? Pesticide Residue Found In 70% Of US Produce & 92% Of Kale
Roughly 70% of all produce sold in the U.S. has pesticide residue in it, even after it is washed, according to a new report from the Guardian. According to data from the US Department of Agriculture and analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, strawberries, spinach and kale have the heaviest pesticide presence, while sweetcorn, avocados and pineapples had the lowest presence.
In news likely to send anxiety attacks across vegan circles, more than 92% of kale that was tested had two or more pesticide residues in it. A sample of any conventionally farmed kale could contain “up to 18 different pesticides”, according to the report.
Dacthal was the most common pesticide found. It was detected in about 60% of kale samples and is banned in Europe and classified as a possible carcinogen in the U.S.
Alexis Temkin, a toxicologist working with the EWG, said:
“We definitely acknowledge and support that everybody should be eating healthy fruits and vegetables as part of their diet regardless of if they’re conventional or organic. But what we try to highlight with the Shopper’s Guide to Produce is building on a body of evidence that shows mixtures of pesticides can have adverse effects.”
Other foods that the group warns about include grapes, cherries, apples, tomatoes and potatoes. Foods like avocados, onions and cauliflower were found to be “clean”.
Leonardo Trasande, an environmental medicine specialist at the New York University medical school, told the Guardian that the report was “widely respected” and that “it can inform shoppers who want to buy some organic fruits and vegetables, but would like to know which ones they could prioritize.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Is a key ingredient humans need to live about to run short?
Is a key ingredient humans need to live about to run short?
Phosphorus is essential for all living organisms. So, it’s not surprising that humans get their phosphorus from other living organisms, mostly plants, that have absorbed phosphorus from the soil.
The introduction of phosphate fertilizers made it possible to ensure that enough phosphorus for healthy plant growth is available in practically any farmland soils. At first, farmers had access to phosphate fertilizers from bone ash and later from phosphate deposits accumulated from bird and bat guano on certain tropical islands (some of which deposits were 30 feet deep before they were mined and completely exhausted). More recently, phosphates have come from mining rocks rich in phosphorus.
All seemed well for the long term as supplies of the rock phosphates were thought to be hundreds of years at current rates of consumption. But a group of researchers upended the consensus in 2009 forecasting that phosphate production could peak as early as 2030. A peak wouldn’t be the end of phosphate production. But it would mark the beginning of an ongoing decline in phosphorus available from mines. This would come as a shock to a world food system accustomed to consistently rising phosphorus supplies needed to feed a growing population.
There are ways to recycle the phosphorus we eat, primarily through the sewage sludge from municipal sewage systems. But one of the easiest and most beneficial ways is building soil using compost. Crop residue, animal manure and human food wastes are important sources for such compost. It’s an old idea that is finding it’s way back into our modern agriculture.
In fact, one of the most important factors in the availability of phosphorus in any soil is the healthy presence of vast colonies of microorganisms that free phosphorus from its inorganic chemical prisons and make it available to organic life. Compost is an excellent way to build such a microbiotic community.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Oil, Agriculture and Imperialism: Averting the Fast-Track to Armageddon?
Oil, Agriculture and Imperialism: Averting the Fast-Track to Armageddon?
US National Security Advisor John Bolton has more or less admitted that the ongoing destabilisation of Venezuela is about grabbing its oil. He recently stated:
“We’re looking at the oil assets… We’re in conversation with major American companies now… It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
The US’s hand-picked supposed leader-in-waiting, Juan Guaido, aims to facilitate the process and usher in a programme of ‘mass privatisation’ and ‘hyper-capitalism’ at the behest of his coup-instigating masters in Washington, thereby destroying the socialist revolution spearheaded by the late Hugo Chavez and returning to a capitalist oligarch-controlled economic system.
One might wonder who is Bolton, or anyone in the US, to dictate and engineer what the future of another sovereign state should be. But this is what the US has been doing across the globe for decades. Its bloody imperialism, destabilisations, coups, assassinations, invasions and military interventions have been extensively documented by William Blum.
Of course, although oil is key to the current analysis of events in Venezuela, there is also the geopolitical subtext of debt, loans and Russian investment and leverage within the country. At the same time, it must be understood that US-led capitalism is experiencing a crisis of over-production: when this occurs capital needs to expand into or create new markets and this entails making countries like Venezuela bow to US hegemony and open up its economy.
For US capitalism, however, oil is certainly king. Its prosperity is maintained by oil with the dollar serving as the world reserve currency. Demand for the greenback is guaranteed as most international trade (especially and significantly oil) is carried out using the dollar. And those who move off it are usually targeted by the US (Venezuela being a case in point).
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Eat Less Meat and Save the Planet
Eat Less Meat and Save the Planet
Dr. D:
Eat less meat to save the planet – report (1)
The new diet that could save the planet (2)
What to eat to save the planet: Report urges ‘radical changes’ to world’s diet – less meat, more veggies (3)
These headlines, likely sourced from a recent article from “The Lancet” (4) are a regular feature of our time, in diet, in environmentalism, and in global warming. They are well-researched, sourced by the world’s experts, and put forward with the highest intentions. However, they are also completely wrong – dangerously, ignorantly wrong.
Like most industries, agriculture and food production is a specialty, with its own language and details. I don’t attempt to tell the Lancet how to perform heart surgery, for to do so would be ridiculous, dangerous, outside of my expertise. I wouldn’t tell a geologist how to interpret the magnetic layers of rock, or how oceanographers should properly interpret sea water samples to guide us on fishing or pollution. Yet this is what they do for farmers.
The primary drive of most such articles is that, with so many people, and so much hunger, we find that it takes “2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef.” that “64% of US cropland produces livestock feed.” (5) That it takes “20 pounds corn [to make] 1 pound beef.” (6) Or that you can get 15lbs of beef per acre, but 263lbs of soybeans. (7) Also that cattle are the primary reason for deforestation, and a major cause of methane.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
