The drought currently hitting the U.S. has expanded across 64 percent of the country — with 42 percent of the country facing severe drought conditions.
High temperatures and a lack of rain are crippling corn, wheat and soy crops. Since May 31st, corn futures have shot up by 48.5 percent, wheat prices have climbed 46.5 percent, and soybean futures have risen by 31.2 percent. The price of ethanol has also risen by 25 percent since the beginning of the year.
The map below, crafted by Farm Futures and Kansas State University using satellite images, shows how poor this year’s crop yields are compared to last year. Green is healthy biomass development and brown is unhealthy:
You can find other satellite images here.
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This image is reminiscent of a petri dish in the early stages of colonization by bacteria. There is a main center of growth, or, in this case, non growth, in eastern Colorado, western Nebraska and S.D. Then there are little dots of “inoculation” scattered throughout much of the country.
In a properly nourished petri dish, those dots will grow quickly together. If they grow at the rate of, say, doubling every 24 hours, they will cover half the available area one day before they cover all of it. Presto, Change-o!
If dry conditions continue as expected due to global warming, those little dots could exhibit a similar pattern as the areas that are now suffering from drought fail to recover, and the adjacent areas also succumb while new “dots of drought” crop up in between.
It will be interesting, in a dark way, to see how the pattern develops — the growth of death, as it were.
If you want to get a feeling for what it’s like, and can’t visit a drought afflicted area, read Timothy Eagan’s “The Worst Hard Time,” an excellent piece of historical journalism about the dust bowl.
Grim.
I live in central Indiana, but was out of town for most of the early part of the drought. I have to say, it was shocking to come home to, really shocking. The trees are droopy, the corn is browning, the grass is shot. If you haven’t experienced drought conditions this serious and live in a nearby area, it’s well worth the sight seeing trip. It really is like being in another place.
This drought will cause the supply/demand balance of food to be three times worse than during 2010/11, when the Arab Spring happened due to the rising price of food.
It will test our collective humanity like never before, yet we will do nothing, even though we could do something, such as ending ehtanol production to aleviate the starvation.
http://zoltansustainableecon.blogspot.com/2012/07/ethics-of-ethanol-amid-us-drought.html
Food belongs on the table — not in the gas tank.
If Vilsack can’t or won’t answer questions wrt the climate change link then sack him and find somebody who will US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack’s evasiveness on climate change and drought.
Is there no hope of this administration calling things as they are?