Leftists are
always worried
always worried
about something.
The climate 100 years
in the future is one concern.
Leftists won't debate
their wild guesses
of the future climate,
claiming the
"science is settled".
In fact,
science is never settled,
and not one person knows
what the climate will be like
in 100 years, or in 10 years,
or even in one year.
Almost every unusual
weather event is falsely blamed
on "climate change".
on "climate change".
That's strange, because
greenhouse gas warming
should reduce temperature
differentials between the
tropics, and the poles,
making the weather milder.
One ongoing disaster
from extreme weather
hasn't received
much attention.
This year's weather has been
a disaster for many U.S. farmers,
especially in the Midwest.
The wettest 12 months
on record, and also
coldest "winter"
( October 2018 through April 2019,
based on maximum temperatures
in the 48 contiguous states )
was followed by the second
wettest May on record.
The mainstream media
doesn't seem to care,
which might explain
why they haven't been
blaming the flooding on
"climate change".
My assumption is they
don't care because
so many Trump voters
in those "red states"
are affected.
The recent heat wave
in France, however,
got lots of attention,
in France, however,
got lots of attention,
and was blamed
on climate change.
Many U.S. farmers were
already dealing with the
Trump - China trade war, and
a high level of bankruptcies
and suicides, BEFORE
the destructive weather.
2019 will be a bad year,
even if weather is perfect
for the rest of 2019.
Any severe heat wave
this summer, or an early
frost hitting the Midwest,
would likely make 2019
the worst year for
corn farmers
in U.S. history.
Corn is not supposed to grow in mud,
but many farmers in the middle
of the country had no other choice.
Most farmers got their seeds
planted in the poor conditions,
so what's coming out of the ground
looks bad.
( see photos at end of article )
Many of these crops will not be ready
for harvest before the first hard frost.
The picture below shows farmer Kyle,
who is about 6’3” -- one year ago his
corn was almost above his head.
Not even close in 2019:
According to John Newton,
the American Farm Bureau
Federation chief economist,
we have never faced
“anything like this since
I’ve been working in agriculture”.
The storms have left millions
of acres unseeded in the
$51 billion U.S. corn market,
and crops planted late
are at a greater risk for
damage from severe weather
during the growing season.
When Ohio Department
of Agriculture Director
Dorothy Pelanda toured farms
in her state, she saw fields
“filled with water and weeds
instead of crops”… ,
according to
her press release.
The deluge of heavy rain
in late May, and early June,
had flooded much of
the area’s fertile farmland.
There's no way we'll come
anywhere close to the
14.3 billion bushels of
U.S. corn harvested last year.
Farm bankruptcies
had already risen
to the highest level
since the last recession,
BEFORE all the rain.
A survey of bank CEOs,
by Creighton University’s
Heider College of Business,
found they expect the
percentage of
farm loan defaults,
over the next 12 months,
in a number of
Midwestern states,
including Illinois,
to be double the
2017 default rates.
Last Wednesday, severe storms
dumped even more rain, from
Washington state to Illinois.
Missouri farmer Kate Glastetter,
age 25, working with her father,
grows wheat, bean, and corn.
Glastetter says their fields
are covered in water.
“It’s like lakefront property.
The fields are washing away.”
The Missouri and Mississippi
River basins are still recovering,
since March, as record flooding
in the central United States
caused historic crop
planting delays.
The chart below shows
end of May 2019 flooding:
The Mississippi River
received rain and snow
at 200% above normal
this spring, causing
corn farmers, and
some soybean farmers,
to wait longer
to plant their crops
than ever recorded
in Department of
Agriculture data.
“I never thought we’d see
this widespread of a
weather issue
— all the way from
South Dakota to Ohio,”
said Jerry Gulke,
president of the Gulke Group,
to the Farm Journal’s AgWeb.
Food prices are going to go up.
Gas prices are going to go up,
as less corn is available
for making ethanol.
U.S. farmers face
large income declines
in 2019.
Businesses that
provide seeds,
fertilizer,
farm equipment
and services
are also struggling.
BBG reports that:
"At Burrus Seed
in Arenzville, Illinois,
employees spend
as much time
trying to lift
farmers’ spirits,
as they do
selling to them."
Net farm income
in 2018 came in
at about half
of the $123 billion
earned in 2013.
2019 will be
worse than 2018.
The amount of corn
produced in the U.S.
this year will be
way below normal.
Millions of acres will
go unplanted.
Much of the corn that
has been planted
is coming up very slowly,
due to the poor conditions:
( see photos at end of article )
James McCune, a farmer
from Mineral, Illinois,
was unable to plant 85%
of his intended corn acres.
“It’s a disaster like
I’ve never seen before,”
McCune told FOX Business.
“My neighbors didn’t get
90% of their corn planted.”
According to the end of May
U.S. Department of Agriculture
report, 73% of the cornfields
in Illinois have been planted,
67% in Indiana, and only
50% in Ohio.
Farmers not able to plant crops
have been flooding their insurance
companies with claims.
“We get pockets of claims every year,”
said Luke Sandrock of the Cornerstone
Agency insurance company.
“We have 1-2 percent of our clients
(who typically file). This year,
it’s over 90%, and so we’ve just
never dealt with it on this size
of a scale before.”
Corn farmers all over the Midwest
are distressed by what they see
emerging from the ground.
Corn farmer Rob Sharkey said:
“We did not get conditions
that were right for planting,
so we went when we could.
It’s ugly.”
It's difficult to grow corn in soil
saturated with water.
Mike Thacker, a farmer in
Walnut, Illinois, planted
about 1,600 acres of corn,
or 60% of what he had planned.
He's reluctant to plant more
because yields typically decline
the later a crop is planted.
Farmers say a late-planted crop
is more susceptible to damage
from hot summer weather,
and/or an autumn frost.
Meanwhile, U.S. farmers
were already being hurt
by the Trump trade war
with China.
The Ministry of Agriculture
and Rural Affairs of the
People’s Republic of China
recently reported that for
the first five months of 2019,
imports of agricultural
products from the US
fell 55.3% year-over-year.
Much of decline was due to
a 70.6% year-over-year decline
of soybeans in the same period.
I have written before that China
cut back their purchases of
U.S. foods for only one logical
reason -- it created an opportrunity
in trade negotiations to "look good"
by merely returning to their
prior level of purchases !
Meanwhile, the US farm lobby
is asking for a third farm bailout.
President Trump has promised
about $28 billion in farm bailouts,
in two separate rounds to farmers.
The bailouts came from the
Commodity Credit
Corporation (CCC),
established in the
Great Depression,
to compensate farmers
during economic stress.
