by INFORUM
Do farmers hold the key to climate?
May 28, 2010 at 10:57 pm in INFORUM
CHICAGO – Amid one of the warmest springs on record in Chicago and renewed worries about our warming planet, how is it that late-summer days across the Midwest are cooling?
The answer may be in the towering, tightly packed rows of corn that blanket Illinois at harvest and the ripple effects from industrialized farming that scientists are only beginning to understand. Continue reading…
This is really the type of thing we are seeing in North Dakota too. Wasn’t long ago a large portion of the state was summerfallow. Now, unless farmers can’t plant they pretty well plant everything. So we are seeing humidities in the middle of summer very, very different than we would have seen in say the 50′s or 60′s. We’re not Kansas, but the humidity is just so much higher now than it was not many years ago.
That leads to more rain, and it seems longer growing seasons.
The rain and high humidity have given us Devils Lake. Not drainage.
Some want to just say it’s drainage, that’s simple but with climate simple is often wrong. There’s still water storage in those drained areas, just now crops use it and the water is stored in the soil. More water is being used because that’s what gives us the humidity.
Water breeds water. Eyes don’t see the water when it’s being drawn out of the ground and transpired by crops but it’s substantial, and more than it would be from water.
So we see the weather change. Scab wasn’t much of a concern for many years. About the time we got to continuous cropping, scab changed wheat and barley culture in ND. Julys are just too wet now. Winter wheat normally avoids scab by being earlier, before crops become large and start to really give off water.
Plus the humidity tends to keep extreme heat away which agains would stop plant diseases like scab and white mold in check.
Devils Lake will flow unless we go back to summerfallow, dust storms, and lots of tillage. That’s not going to happen so I’m betting Devils Lake continues to grow until it gets to flow. It’s the climate change. A change by man, but not the one most people talk about.
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