Corn Belt Shifts North With Climate as Kansas Crop Dies

[Purveyor]

Joe Waldman is saying goodbye to corn after yet another hot and dry summer convinced the Kansas farmer that rainfall won’t be there when he needs it anymore.

“I finally just said uncle,” said Waldman, 52, surveying his stunted crop about 100 miles north of Dodge City. Instead, he will expand sorghum, which requires less rain, let some fields remain fallow and restrict corn to irrigated fields.

While farmers nationwide planted the most corn this year since 1937, growers in Kansas sowed the fewest acres in three years, instead turning to less-thirsty crops such as wheat, sorghum and even triticale, a wheat-rye mix popular in Poland. Meanwhile, corn acreage in Manitoba, a Canadian province about 700 miles north of Kansas, has nearly doubled over the past decade due to weather changes and higher prices.

Shifts such as these reflect a view among food producers that this summer’s drought in the U.S. -- the worst in half a century -- isn’t a random disaster. It’s a glimpse of a future altered by climate change that will affect worldwide production.

MORE...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-15/corn-belt-shifts-north-with-climate-as-kansas-crop-dies.html

[Politicalboi]

1. If we let water run our lives

We are the fools. We have ways to convert sea water to fresh water. We have wind turbines that produce water through condensation. We have floods almost in the same regions every year, but no plan of capturing that water to use it for food crops. One would think we were a third world country like Brazil. But then again Brazil still uses sugar cane for their cars since the first shortage in the 70's.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/17/us-climate-sugarcane-idUSTRE73G1N820110417

[bluestate10]

5. We as a nation don't utilize water well.

It is not like there was no rain, just not enough when 90% of what did come down was wasted. Trapping technologies for rain can range from simple, to complicated, but all accomplish the same outcome, one rainstorm supplies water for a number of waterings, not just one.

[Care Acutely]

6. Sea water.

In Kansas.

[femrap]

2. I wish our

farmers would grow the kind of wheat that is grown in Europe...our wheat really isn't good for you. I call it 'The Wonder Bread' wheat. Anyone who has tasted the different breads of Europe know what I'm talking about. Farmers who do that would make a fortune, I think. I'll run the bakery which is also different type of ovens than here in the US.

I'll take the French ovens and wheat, if I had to choose.

I love the sourdough bread here....but being OH, you just can't get the real thing.

[tabasco]

3. I will never understand the rows and rows of white bread in Amercian grocery stores.

Walk into a German grocery store and find so much better bread and it's just as cheap as white bread in America.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Here in Cali you actually have

quite a bit of artisan bread... and then there are those of us who bake ours regularly (even if I do not get to taste it)

[femrap]

14. Germans grow

'good wheat' and we grow the bad kind. Maybe I can find a farmer who wants to grow a German wheat....but I bet Monsanto will not allow it!

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Oh lord, this was predicted, but I think this is faster than the predictions

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. I was in western Kansas a couple times this summer

It's horrible. The corn crops were dead. Cattle (the few we saw) were way too skinny. Rivers were gone. No water. One river bed is now a popular spot for ATVs.

It's very sad out there.

[Matariki]

9. Say hello to Canada, our new overlords.

And here everyone thought it was going to be China, eh?

[Trailrider1951]

10. Thank you for letting us know...

I live out here in farm country, in Central Texas. I saw this happen here the last two summers in a row. This year was much better, as we are only a couple of inches low for so far this year. Losing your livelyhood that you have worked all year for is just heartbreaking. Saw that happen to more than a few of my neighbors.

[Care Acutely]

11. Kansas and Nebraska are dried to a crisp. Decades old established trees

are dead all over the place. Well pumps ran dry and caught fire by the hundreds this summer.

[Odin2005]

13. If this keeps up there is going to be another dust bowl.

Nebraska's sand hill will go back to being sand dunes.

[Odin2005]

12. Oh great, now Western MN is going to be even more owned by Big Corn.