Drought 2012 and Concerns for Next Year

[Farm Boy]

CNN actually had a half decent agricultural article regarding the US drought this year even if it is a teensy bit alarmist.

Just wanted to share with any nerds that like news about corn and whatnot. Feel free to share any anecdotal experience or other concerns. I'm no agronomist but food policy is always fun!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's waaaay too early for them to be raising the dust bowl alarm.

But if it comes to pass, I have a solution:
Convert the oil pipelines to water pipelines and build a whole lot more of them. (only half serious)

 

[Farm Boy]

Indeed, another dust bowl persay is unlikely with advances in tilling methodology between now and the 1930s(soil conservation districts born of that era still exist by the way). I would say the more immediate and relevant concerns are 1) that repeated year after year drought drives producers out of business and creates(to an extent) Wallmart-ization of agricultural production as larger entities survive and expand over smaller operations that can't handle 3 years of loss-loss-loss and 2) global supply disruption. There is always a certain amount reserve product stored in the system and it can usually handle a bad year or several sorta junky years. We're probably going to be closer to the cusp with certain goods if the harvests this fall are as bad as predicted. That leaves much less play in the system for a bad year next year should it happen. I'm already sweating about how much an 80,000 kernel bag of seed corn is going to cost in the spring. Isn't going to be pretty.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't disagree with your assesment at all. I guess what I'm really getting at is that I don't know if we are going to have a continual, year-on megadrought.

Have we had a succession of bad droughts (nationwide, not just in Texas) or bad harvests?

As you say, the system can take a year or two or three of this before it all falls apart in a big way. I just don't know how close this year's drought has pushed us towards that.

I'm also hesitant to say it will necessarily continue past next week, much less the next few years.

 

[WindFish]

Wasn't a dustbowl a primary factor of the US depression?

 

[Murky]

If the drought persist into next year your rather expensive investment would be lost. It would result in the loss of more small farms. Even some corporations and co-ops will probably have to file some sort of restructuring plan if the drought were to persist for a long time.

I sincerely hope that the global warming predictions are not in a big hurry to come true. The would only exacerbate the problems.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Wasn't a dustbowl a primary factor of the US depression?

Yes and no. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a primary factor (which implies it was a cause) but it definitely made things worse. And made it much, much worse for the farmers subjected to it.

It's actually quite eerie when you think about it. If the drought continues, we really are repeating some things from that era. Let's hope we learned from the past.

 

[Farm Boy]

I don't disagree with your assesment at all. I guess what I'm really getting at is that I don't know if we are going to have a continual, year-on megadrought.

Have we had a succession of bad droughts (nationwide, not just in Texas) or bad harvests?

As you say, the system can take a year or two or three of this before it all falls apart in a big way. I just don't know how close this year's drought has pushed us towards that.

I'm also hesitant to say it will necessarily continue past next week, much less the next few years.

Well, we never know if we are going to get a drought in the coming year. One year is usually fine to an extent, the 2nd year is degrees worse, the 3rd is worse yet(individually as well as collectively). Some areas have had 2 in a row now. Overall supply can almost always handle spotty crop loss, that's the normal. The reality of how widespread this year's is is what is stressing the system. I guess I don't really know for sure how low market reserves are forcast to be in November, everyone is playing a guessing game atm until the areas that were comparatively less-screwed pull their crops in for the year.

It's pretty safe to say it will continue past next week. Even were we to get torrential rain for the entire upcoming week, the soil can't soak in enough to refill the water table in that amount of time, most would run off. In order to equalize out the weather needs to produce more steady rain over a period of time. It can't binge to catch up. Well, it can binge, but it doesn't catch up.

Wasn't a dustbowl a primary factor of the US depression?

It was a significant factor that played in, yes. Poor farmers can often exist in poverty through lack of expense if they really need to. Things that drive up the misery and casualty index in that situation are foreclosures and weather. A not insignificant amount of poor rural families had deaths from lack of production and quite simply, the dust killed people.

 

[KMRblue1027]

Wasn't a dustbowl a primary factor of the US depression?

It was likely the major factor that extended the lifespan of the depression past a few years but not a factor in starting it.

 

[Murky]

A great depression was caused by 1929 crash of the stock market. The dust bowl made things catastrophic (borderline apocalyptic) for those living in the affected areas.

Edit:
BTW, the documentary "The Dust Bowl" will be on PBS in November
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It was likely the major factor that extended the lifespan of the depression past a few years but not a factor in starting it.

I don't mean to downplay the suffering the Dust Bowl wrought at all, but I'm not sure this is acurate. The Depression was much deeper, and much more systemic; so much so that the Dust Bowl (IMO) didn't add significantly to it's length or the depth of it. That's how wide and deep the Depression was.

For the farmers directly impacted by it, of course, this isn't true.

 

[Ajidica]

Wasn't a dustbowl a primary factor of the US depression?

The US agricultural industry had been suffering through most of the twenties. New technologies allowed increased production which lead to an overall drop in food prices which savaged the farmers.

 

[Farm Boy]

The US agricultural industry had been suffering through most of the twenties. New technologies allowed increased production which lead to an overall drop in food prices which savaged the farmers.

With some bright-spot years, most notably when Europe obligingly blew up it's own production base in World War I, US farms suffered most of the time from the Gilded Age to World War II.

 

[Ajidica]

I was under the impression that it was worse during the 20's than usual, but then again, I'm not very good on American economic history.

 

[GoodGame]

Dust bowls are not as much a modern concern because there are 'conservation' grasses (e.g. bred prairie grasses such as 'switchgrass') which have been in use for decades. So even if no one were to plant corn again ever, they could plant such grasses, which incidentally might have the effect of carbon fixation and possibly have economic use in biofuel production.

I think this drought shows the importance of water management and hydrology studies.

Unrelated, a pet sci-fi idea of mine would be to create an underwater stream to funnel ocean water to the midwest, with the water quality being adjusted along the way to underground reservoirs.

 

[Farm Boy]

Salinization being a major problem with that, but yea - that would be neato!

 

[Murky]

What about building more reservoirs to hold flood water? Along rivers you could create more run off channels then have that go into holding reservoirs to be later released or used for irrigation.

 

[Antilogic]

I don't mean to downplay the suffering the Dust Bowl wrought at all, but I'm not sure this is acurate. The Depression was much deeper, and much more systemic; so much so that the Dust Bowl (IMO) didn't add significantly to it's length or the depth of it. That's how wide and deep the Depression was.

For the farmers directly impacted by it, of course, this isn't true.

As with all economic indicators, it depends on how you look at it. Stocks had a temporary surge in the mid-30s before the second hit in 1937, but the farmers still struggled to produce in 34 through 36 because of the soil was so poor. Human suffering is hard to quantify so it's typically ignored.



However, we haven't had dirt blizzards on the east coast yet, so it's not nearly as bad now as it was then. At least not yet.

 

[Cutlass]

My concern is that this is the second year in a row for major drought in much of the country. And the aquafires are way low from overuse. So there's not a lot of slack if we get a third year like this one.

 

[Berzerker]

the farmers still struggled to produce in 34 through 36 because of the soil was so poor

most of our temp records go back to '34 and '36, but this region didn't get hit too bad

apparently yellowstone and the volcanic pacific nw has been dumping plenty of ash to our north, thats some of the best farmland in the world while to the south the soil aint so good

i dont know what all controls the jet stream, but i do know when it flops around back and forth from north to south, we get bad weather (and rain )

its been largely riding north for the last 8-10 months