Warning colors fill the US map of the US Drought Monitor, a joint project between federal agencies in that country and the University of Nebraska. Michigan is abnormally dry. Minnesota is experiencing moderate drought. Another severe drought covers the Pacific Northwest, central Texas and southern Wisconsin, and the breadbasket states of Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas are splashed with red, the hottest color for the most worrisome conditions. All of these areas are in extreme drought , and some of them have been plunged into a state that the project calls "exceptional", that is, places where the effects will last more than six months.
Why is there so much drought in parts of the US?
Those places are dry because they are hot . The extraordinary heat domes that have descended on parts of the US are not only making life miserable for people, including city dwellers without adequate indoor cooling or drivers and farm workers for Phone Number List ced to work outdoors. . They are also harming crops : they slow down growth, reduce yields and reduce harvests. Fortunately, the disruptions are not yet a catastrophe; The United States continues to produce enough calories to feed its population and trade internationally. But crop and climate experts worry they are a sign of the growing instability of food production, as unpredictable weather undermines the seasonal patterns farmers depend on .
"Climate models for agriculture have been projected into the future based on what happened in the past," says Erin Coughlan de Pérez, a climatologist and associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. and lead author of a June study predicting that 100-year heat waves could begin cycling as quickly as every six years in the US Midwest, undermining the development of wheat plants. "In the past, temperature may not have been a constraint for wheat; temperatures that would cause crop failure may never have been reached," she continues. "But that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future," she warns.
Reports from across the United States attest to crops being damaged by heat and drought. In Georgia, still known as the Peach State, although it is only the third largest producer, almost the entire peach crop was lost due to an unusually warm February, followed by two late frosts in March. In Texas in June, cotton plants alarmingly shed their bolls, the hard fruits that contain the valuable fiber, to survive the metabolic stress of hot nights . And Kansas' winter wheat crop, which is harvested in the summer, is expected to be the smallest in more than two decades.
The crop problem affects the entire hemisphere
The problems created by extreme heat are not limited to American farms. Spain , the world's largest producer of olive oil, is facing a poor harvest for the second year in a row, due to a spring heat wave that affected the flowering of olive trees, followed by extreme summer heat that is causing the fall of immature fruits. In Italy , scorching heat has reduced tomato production by a third. The European agricultural organization Copa-Cogeca predicted in July that heat and drought would drastically reduce cereal harvests in almost all European Union countries . India , the world's largest rice exporter, has banned the export of some varieties because unusual weather patterns are reducing production. In China , both row crops and farm animals have died from heat waves. And in Iran , the government put the entire country on pause this week, for two days, because the temperatures were so high. |
