Category Archives: Weather

One Story of Many

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I am supposed to write once a week… I may be a week or two behind – simply because things have been just a little crazy in my neck of the woods.  As you may have seen in Cindy’s post a couple of weeks ago – I have accepted a position at Brownfield Ag News in Indiana.  I will start there June 13th.  But the past few weeks I have been house hunting in Indianapolis and Lafayette… and I have yet to find anything.  I won’t lie – I’ve been whining about it all week.  But – we’re making strides and we’ll get there eventually.  I am however incredibly excited about writing the next chapter in my life.

As riveting as my lamenting about house hunting is – I want to share a story that really touched my heart.  In fact – it reminded me how blessed I am to have a roof over my head.  Meet Ted Glaser.  He’s a farmer from Pointe Coupee Parish, Louisiana.  I spoke with him on Monday about some of the issues going on in the south along the Mississippi River.  Glaser is in a tough spot – he farms a 4,000 acre diversified operation.  One quarter of that is inside the Morganza Floodway.  Ted told me they gave them just a few weeks to get what they needed from inside that now flooded ground.

But the challenges don’t stop there.  They may be flooded in certain areas… But Glaser said just across the dam they are in dire need of a rain. He noted off the air he’d hate to be answering prayers from farmers this year…. His quick wit brought a smile to my face.  I have to admit – I’m always amazed at the resiliency of the farmer and the ability to roll with the punches.  No matter how big… or small.

I think that was the lesson learned.

Farm Bureau Estimates Flooded Farm Acres at Over 3.5 Million

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The American Farm Bureau Federation is estimating that nearly 3.6 million acres of farmland in the southern United States have been impacted by flooding, including about 40 percent of the rice crop.

AFBF received flood damage estimates from individual state Farm Bureaus in the affected areas.

Arkansas topped the list with a million acres affected, including 300,000 acres of rice and 120,000 acres of wheat. Illinois was estimated to have 500,000 acres of farmland under water, with Mississippi and Missouri coming in at 600,000 and 570,000 acres, respectively. Tennessee reported 650,000 acres and Louisiana was pegged at 280,000 acres.

“There is no doubt about it, the effect of the flooding on farmers and ranchers is being felt deeply across the south,” said AFBF Chief Economist Bob Young. “One is reminded of the ’93 or ’95 floods in terms of scale of affected area.”

But, said Young, it’s critical that the government acts quickly to rebuild the levees and allow producers to make plans for the future.

“In many of these areas, agriculture is the major economic driver for the region,” said Young. “While some may be able to get a crop in the ground this year, we need to also think about the long-term economic health of these farms and communities.”

Without the levees in place to protect homes and farms however, it may be hard to make those investments, added Young.

Winter Weather Woes for Livestock

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Cattle producers around the country have been busy this winter trying to care for their animals in particularly harsh weather.

cow snowIce, snow and freezing temperatures mean lots of extra work to feed and water cattle and there were lots of producers who were unable to make the trip to Denver last week for the Cattle Industry Convention because of that. There have even been reports of barns collapsing and killing cattle. USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) officials are reminding livestock producers throughout the Plains states and the Midwest that FSA programs may be available to assist them.

“This is turning out to be a tough winter for many ranchers and farmers in the nation’s heartland, and learning about our FSA programs is an important step for producers to take,” FSA Administrator Jonathan Coppess said in a release last week. “We need producers to document the number and kind of livestock that have died as a direct result of these winter storms and timely notify their local FSA office of these losses. There may be situations where producers are transporting feed to their livestock. Producers should document these additional costs.”

FSA administers several programs that help producers recover from livestock deaths that are beyond normal mortality rates, losses of purchased and/or harvested forage, and with the additional costs of providing or transporting feed.

Here in mid Missouri, we still have a foot or more of snow in some areas after last week’s storm that dumped about 20 inches. The photo is from Brownfield Network’s Cyndi Young-Puyear who has a cow-calf operation with her husband Jim not far from the state capitol. She’s really proud of her little black and white striped calf and she reports on Facebook that the snow hasn’t slowed little “Oreo Speedwagon” down a bit!

Morning Temp A Nice Round Number

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I thought that when Cindy and I got to Atlanta last week we were not in the balmy south, but maybe we were. We got home last night and here’s what this morning’s temperature was. It actually said minus one before I stopped at a light to take the photo.

We’re in post AG CONNECT Expo and AFBF Annual Meeting recovery mode with some more stories to post and to get ready for the next agventure. We’ve got some pretty exciting announcements coming up and now I need to get to work on them.

One of those things is our move to a brand new web server with our hosting company, Joyent. We’ve been on some great hardware but now we’re moving to the latest and greatest. The move should be complete my this weekend. We’ve already moved about 13 websites for various clients and this weekend AgWired gets moved. It will mean no posting from about mid day Friday until Sunday. But I can take a day off. Really.

Monsanto Creates Farm Weather and News

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Monsanto is making a bold move with a unique partnership with the Weather Channel. Nothing like taking two of the things most important to farmers and making it easily available to them in an online and social networking environment!

Monsanto and Weather Channel

The Weather Channel Interactive, in partnership with agricultural products leader Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON), announced a new section on weather.com® dedicated to weather and farming at www.weather.com/farming. Within the Agriculture News & Forecast, the main feature is the Farmers Forecast, which includes up-to-date weather information that matters most to the agricultural community, such as severe weather alerts affecting crops and detailed data about precipitation, wind and soil moisture.

The new Farmers Forecast adds farming-related alerts in addition to the severe weather alerts already available through the weather.com site. These will alert consumers to warnings with freeze, frost, high wind or hail indicators for each forecasted day. With precipitation being critical for the farming community, not only does the page include the percent of precipitation, but it also includes an actual projection of the amount of rain that is expected.

Weather.com/farming will offer several components to help farmers make decisions before and throughout the season. From the same page, users can easily change locations to keep up with multiple farms or compare sites. Among the information included on the new section:
· Soil moisture information
· Detailed wind data
· Sunrise and sunset times
· UV index

The section is also a one-stop resource for the latest agriculture news. Users can stay up to date with articles related to the industry while checking out the next day’s forecast. Users can easily bookmark any page within the new section, such as the Farmers Forecast, to return to this practical resource and connect it to social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg and others.

Along with the new section within the weather.com site, Monsanto will also run an online campaign throughout 2009 featuring many of its brands such as Deltapine, DEKALB, Asgrow, Yieldgard, Roundup Ready and Roundup PowerMax.

Post Update: If you’re an iPhone owner make sure that when you use your browser that you select the “Classic Weather Channel” link instead of the mobile version. This isn’t available in the mobile version yet.

Forecasting for Farming Success

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There are two kinds of information that are important for Pessl Instruments: “ground truth” and expected forecasts. The Austria-based company claims that it offers a one-of-a-kind tool for farmers:

“What we do is we measure the ground truth,” Gottfried Pessl, President of Pessl Instruments said. “That means what’s going on actually on the field of the farmers but we now also bring in the weather forecast. The weather forecast comes from a Swiss company we have teamed up with and this Swiss company delivers us a five day weather forecast in real-time for that particular farm.”

Gottfried adds that the technology is based entirely on the internet giving farmers the option of accessing the “ground truth” and weather forecast information on any internet capable electronic device, such as a cell phone.

“We have a wireless system which brings the data in a centralized server and through that centralized server our clients can worldwide have real time access to the data,” Gottfried said.

The information collected from Pessl Instruments, Gottfried explained, is valuable for irrigation management for plant protection requirements. He says the collected data can help farmers “optimize the use of the chemicals, to prevent the diseases to prevent insect pest outbreaks and also to have a full traceability of their crop.” Plus, he says using weather forecast data together with real-time weather helps farmers schedule their farm operations associated with the weather, such as harvest sprays.

“Most of the activities on the farm are very much dependent on if the weather is good or the weather is bad,” Gottfried said.

The company now exports tools and technology to about 70 countries.

I interviewed Gottfried about his products and technology. You can listen to my interview with Gottfried here:

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Help Flooded Farmers in the Midwest

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Willie Nelson is sending out pleas for help. He’s calling for donations to help family farmers that are being devastated by severe weather and flooding in the Midwest.

Severe weather in nine Midwestern states is devastating family farmers. Disastrous floods in Iowa and Wisconsin have hit farmers especially hard–more than 30 counties in Iowa alone have already been declared federal disaster areas. More areas are expected to be threatened by rising flood water in the next few weeks.

Farm Aid is working now with local farm groups, churches, and rural organizations to get emergency funds out quickly to flooded farmers. This week, we made our first grant of $10,000 to a local Iowa farm organization to provide emergency assistance to farmers in need right now.

Farm Aid has a long history of helping farm families survive disasters — but we need your donation to do it. Can you help by making a tax-deductible donation of $25, $100, $500, or $1,000?

When major disasters like this strike, desperate farmers and farm organizations call Farm Aid. With your help, Farm Aid can help by providing emergency funds for families to buy food and cover living expenses and by supporting emergency hotlines and organizations that provide legal, financial and emotional counseling to farm families in need.

Please make an emergency contribution to Farm Aid’s Family Farm Disaster Fund right now and we will rush your funds to the stricken area.

Stay Strong and Positive,

Willie Nelson

MO Hail

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Deck HailIt might have been a sunny spring day yesterday but today is a different story.

Here’s the scene on my deck a few minutes ago. As the hail stopped the sun poked out for about 10 seconds too.

Yep, a typical midwest weather pattern for the spring. I’m sure someone out there will get the notion that this is unusual and the effect of global warming.

Me, I’d take some warming right now.