11–14 of 14 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Based on your interpretation of some pictures? Or do you have actual data or facts to back up what you’re claiming?
What specifically are they claiming and what data or facts would you wish to receive to back up that claim? To me it just looks like they're stating their opinion.
Artfully arranged photos. Look at the rest of the field, in the background: they got a crop out of most of that. "estimates that more than one of every ten wheat fields in Kansas will be abandoned," ... that could be one producer letting fields go fallow? wouldn't they put in plowdown soybean as a green manure once the wheat was declared "failed"? Or is there some insurance term that would prevent that?
Just because you produce a crop doesn't mean it's economical to harvest it. Farmers must produce sufficient yield to cover the cost of harvesting (fuel, manpower, equipment cost, etc) or they will just leave the failed crop to decompose.
So this is a negative event for the federal budget and taxpayers, but wheat farmers, get paid 85-90% of what the crop would have been worth at market, in the event of crop failures like this. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46686
I believe this kind of risk mitigation is available to AgriCorps as well as individual farmers for all the major crops like cotton, soy etc.
Without livestock farming, this is what happens.
Y'all realize its a desert out there, don't you? I used to live out there. Not Lane County, but its neighbor, Scott County. Google "Great American Desert". Its dry. Its hot. The wind blows to the point that 30 MPH is considered a "breeze". Nothing grows without irrigation. The Ogallala Aquifer is being emptied, just like Lake Mead and every other source of water.
It is dry and sandy country, but far from lifeless... (and far from what people normally think of as "desert" (e.g. the Sahara, or parts of the SW United States).