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Corn in drought
(Picture courtesy of flickr.com.)
Sadly, there is one good aspect I can see coming out of this year’s ‘exceptional’ drought level throughout the state of Texas, and neighboring Oklahoma, Louisiana and New Mexico. It may finally teach farmers that high irrigation crops such as corn are not a good thing to plant here.
The aquifers that are rapidly diminishing in the West are not up to the job imposed on them by growing crops dependent on them. The people who live out here need the water for basic existence, and shouldn’t be thrown into direct competition with farming needs to exist.
With up to half of the area’s nearly 900,000-plus acres of corn already written off, the Texas Corn Producers Board reports many farmers, by the end of last month, still were looking to divert some of their water resources to other fields or crops to have the best chance of making a crop this season, according to the board.
(snip)
“The most important thing for producers to know is they must contact their insurance agent and have their insurance company’s adjuster evaluate the crop prior to diverting water from any acres,” David Gibson, the board’s executive director, said in a news release.
Vaughan said it’s possible a farmer’s insurance claim could be rejected if he or she fails to notify an insurer prior to diverting irrigation or taking other actions to cut losses.
That water is being viewed as an artificial prop for insurance claims is the height of cynicism… no, that comes from another source.
Of course, producers of artificial plants such as Monsanto are rushing in with new GM crops that are supposed to fill a need, but actually are intended to produce just another profit.
Needless to say, growing hemp which is an excellent dry land crop, is a solution that should be considered, and outdated laws changed to make it possible as a substitute for the futile farming that has failed throughout the West.
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“Needless to say, growing hemp which is an excellent dry land crop, is a solution that should be considered, and outdated laws changed to make it possible as a substitute for the futile farming that has failed throughout the West.”
Absolutely! Hemp, along with Flax are much needed plants. Both have many uses such as clothing, oil for food, rope, base for lotions and potions, etc. Our stoopid leaders are missing out on the real purpose of the plants in favor of a faked up war on drugs that targets true medicinal plants.
Thanks, and another potential use is fuel. Any crops that can be grown without using up water resources that we need elsewhere should be taken off the idiotic no-grow list.
Yes. Agreed to both. I have no idea about how economical the hemp fuel or silage would be. But if vegetable oil can run buses, then there is no reason Hemp oil and Flax oil can’t do the same.
AND it reinforces that “need” to put an oil pipeline over the largest under ground water aquifer in the USA…doncha think? The thing that drives me crazy is that a drought will kill rich folks too. They can horde it with their money…but without it…or poisoned…we all die.
Breathable air would seem like a good plan, too, but they elect the same sort that is fighting it in court. Rich folks think they paid for wisdom so whatever they get they fall for, seems like – and get cheated.
As a Dust Bowl survivor, with the lungs to prove it, I can say no one seems to learn from history and experience anymore. They just repeat it. They hated FDR conservation efforts then and now.
If you want to know where that rain went, it’s up here in Minnesota. Corn crops will be good up here. Prices for farmland in Iowa are up 24% since last year. There’s a new bubble for you.
Did you know that our Declaration of Independence was written on Hemp paper?
Here you find all kinds of important information about Hemp.
I said earlier this morning on another thread that I was sick and tired of running around the Mulberry bush with crap. Just look and learn:
http://www.naihc.org/hemp_information/hemp_facts.html
The Dust Bowl came here to visit through every crack and pore, all thru the fifties. (I hadn’t been born in the thirties.) And I heard FDR was socialist from people who only made it through because of the CCC. It’s irrational and part and parcel of the right wing religious crazee.
Corn makes good sense to grow up there, but not down here. I don’t want to even see land prices in TX now.
Wow, love that!
Greenbell,
If you want to know what the bankstas and elites have been up to with land and land prices, here you go:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-10/being-like-soros-in-buying-farm-land-lets-investors-reap-16-annual-gains.html
interesting post ruth, and timely for me, I was just having a conversation with someone on why hemp was better for fuel then corn
could you list all the products hemp would offer and compare those against the crop here in the states?
Yep. Pretty Cool!
My link above gives you a glimpse of some of the by products from hemp. We now have the ability to use the oils and fibers for many more uses than they did in the days of Franklin and Washington.
Part of the Red Scare that is still working. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor my father was certain it was the Reds.
Several sources offer that info, here’s one:
http://www.hemp.com/
I understand people visit the Joseph McCarthy memorial in WI and sign the book with little messages like “He was right!” and “We need Joe now!”
And the chlorination scare is still alive and well some places.
thanks dawgs!
Ruth,
When I recommended I didn’t know it would be front paged. It should be and it should be discussed till the cows come home!
I’m off to fix lunch. Keep up the conversation because America needs to get back to the roots.
If you have corn with lunch, it didn’t come from TX. Enjoy.
Ironically my father became a pacifist and refused (actually found ways around) to “go kill people.” Once he became able to make a living he ended up having one of the first integrated lunch counters for his employees and never turned down kids looking for work. A conservative, almost paranoid, when poor turns liberal with a decent job. I think there is a lesson in that.
why is corn such an attractive crop in the first place?
it doesn’t have much nourishment and is almost as bad for you as candy.
so why do we want to produce it so much?
Government subsidies. For ethanol production.
Talking Stick, that makes sense, for an intelligent person. There’s a world of difference in how facts affect people, as to whether they think things through or just strike out against what they have to deal with, in my experience. Glad your father grew and learned. And dealt well with reality.
Also animal feed. Like wheat, corn has a lot of facilities designed to process it. It’s no better than any other crop, but easy to sell. (Hemp bread is expensive, but more nutritious than wheat bread.)
Thanks Ruth, terrific post.
Appreciate that.
Farmers produce what they can grow and what they can sell. It may not be the right crop for Texas but in the northern midwest it is ideal for a climate where the growing season is hot but short. You get one abundant cash crop.
My mother said that there were places, like the high plains, that should never have been plowed. Planting corn and cotton on them – both high-maintenance, high-value crops – just adds to the problems. (The farmers in that area also grow vegetables, among other things.)
My parents retired from California to a place 50 miles north of Lubbock, out on a farm road. I spent four years there because of Bush41′s recession, and I still miss the wide-open space. (Miss the wind, not so much, but that’s because I live in an area that gets wind.)
Field corn, that becomes corn meal and masa. Your Fritos come from white field corn.
There are programs that encourage returning land to original grass, some farms around here set aside acreage for that purpose. Wide open space is particularly nice at night, to see the stars, and the wind through the tall grass is one of my favorite sounds.
One good thing about threading is it does allow some tangents without interfering with the thrust of the main thread. Hope you don’t mind.
I think poverty has a lot to do with it. Our roots are more literate. My nuclear family’s first 5 years were in dust, poverty and shaming by the Republicans. Here in the south and I include Texas and Oklahoma what goes for “normal incomes” is poverty in the Northeast. I never knew how people in ordinary jobs lived until the victims of NE outsourcing to the south in the 70s began showing up at the Congregational Church. Interesting article on this here.
http://www.southernstudies.org/2011/08/next-low-wage-haven-usa.html
Now that these areas risk running out of water because of useless corporate farming activities that suck down tax dollar$, damage the environment, produce inferior food, and leads to environmental and food supply collapse, has anyone worked on hemp as part of a strategy for reversing micro-climate damage (fast-forward to “Alan Savory” in the text for that portion of the discussion)?
So many people are high on wind farms but as someone who grew up on the Iowa prairie, I have to say I’d rather look at the corn and soybeans than those giant metal windmills. They’re just so at odds with the signature horizonatal nature of the prairie landscape.
I guess there are no cost free choices.
As mentioned in the original post, the laws will need to be changed so that hemp is a legal crop, but of course, it makes so much sense it’s ridiculous not to grow it.
Short grass prairie (long time ago). Good for bison. Bad for corn.
“horizonatal”
what a wonderful invention of a word.
I like to see the windfarms out in W. TX., too.
They’d have to pay me to proof what I write.
‘what goes for “normal incomes” is poverty in the Northeast.’
There’s some of that difference between country and city, too. Costs of living attract retirees here to depressed places, where a reduced income goes farther than you’d expect. Also, nursing care is less. Sadly, the literate folk find themselves a bit out of place, and resented.
I may be wrong, but I think it also suggested to the original inhabitants that they should move on when weather turned against them, and in that I do agree.
I think they did. Called Comanches.
Here Choctaw and Chickasaw.
In my neck of the woods–north Iowa–a recent auction had land going for over $7000/acre. Land is just seen as another speculative commodity for investment.
And as everyone knows how volatile farming can be, it’s only a matter of time until this bubble bursts.
“It may finally teach farmers that high irrigation crops such as corn are not a good thing to plant here.”
One would hope. However, the much more destructive Dust Bowl did not produce such a lesson. Farmers just started draining the Ogallala Aquifer, which is not able to keep up with irrigation needs, as Calvo mentions.
Barring a paradigm-changing catastrophe, there are a few options to improve things. Because the imperative to increase profits every year has been a big part of the problem we now find ourselves in (ever more land under the plow and seeded with the same crop, the resulting falling prices, and then the need for subsidies to keep farmers afloat), socializing or otherwise removing this factor from farming might help. Switching to sustainable crops or letting the land revert back to grassland and use it for grazing, might work as well.
High fructose corn syrup, which is now in damn near every processed food you can imagine. For example, try finding a loaf of bread at the supermarket that doesn’t contain it. One of the features of Capitalism is that it produces top down goods and services that aren’t derived from organic needs. Corn syrup is one of these.
Good point. Ideology has a lot to do with the problem. In this case, the ideology of thoughtless dominance over land and animals. Folks came to the Great Plains from the Eastern US and insisted on planting crops that were familiar with almost no consideration for their new environment. Instead of taking stock of how this environment worked and what might be sustainable on it, they simple sought to impose their will on it. It is very difficult to produce sustainability without consideration for a balanced symbiosis with other forms of life. The long term results have not been good.
Capture rights, that give anyone owning land over an aquifer, are very much in contention now. It’s really up to voters at the moment, to put up and elect responsible political forces that will preserve what we still have, and our future is very much in balance.
Maize originated in the Americas, however, and is suitable in the areas where it is raised wisely.
http://www.nativetech.org/cornhusk/cornhusk.html
The original “Corridor” plan from Texas through to Minnesota/Chicago had water pipelines included to siphon off the Great Lakes. I’ll bet that plan might get dusted off now that there’s a “compelling need” as the aquifers dry up.
If you want to grow hemp then write all your representatives and tell them to support Ron Paul’s H.R. 1831 “Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2011″. It currently has only 22 cosponsors.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-1831
Farming started in that part of Texas in the early part of the 20th century, with the land speculators selling it with ‘rain follows the plow’. (Which is high-grade bullcrap.) People might have been better off, if poorer, sticking with raising cattle.
Don’t think that will happen any time soon. It’s going to cost more money that it would be worth. (The maintenance costs on the water pipes alone would be horrendous – and to get enough water through to be useful would require a lot of large-diameter pipe. (The California Aqueduct gives you some idea of the scale – it’s open canal, mostly, and pumping plants – it’s as wide as a four-lane interstate, including the shoulders.)