Our South Dakota custom cutter said he took six combines to Kiowa and the farmer there said he may not need any of them. A third of his crop is already zeroed out and in another 1-2 weeks, another third will be gone. The South Dakota cutter said we will probably be his only stop between the Gulf of Mexico and South Dakota. I told him we still had a crop but if it continues to not rain, we’ll start seeing severe drought stress showing up along with tiller abortion. Already this will be one of the shortest crops with headed-out wheat being less than 10 inches high.
We have poor numbers of tillers and they are weak and small and we could easily lose a lot of them. We should joint in mid-April. For this area and here on our farm, this will be one of the worst wheat crops in the past 50 years. We have farmed 48 years and aside from 1981, this has potential for being the worst.
The South Dakota cutter also said one of his custom cutter buddies who takes 12 combines to Stanton, Colorado, said there is nothing there. For extreme southwest Kansas, this year is just like last year −no dryland wheat at all. If it’s not irrigated, you have no wheat. Too, the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles are the same as last year with 80% abandonment.
Never mind gold and silver, buy meat, seeds and food. Belt tightening season is upon us. May God have mercy on anyone that saves a commie voter from this oncoming mess.
The precious metals are lead, copper, brass, steel (parkerized or matte blued more than stainless.)
Article makes no sense, snow hasn’t melted off.
ND and SD still have snow, and lots of it. The salesman wasn’t talking about his home state, but rather states further south such as Kansas and Oklahoma.
It just snowed 27” in Casper, Wyoming last Monday. Coldest, wettest Wyoming winter in ages.
Article made sense to me, Hutchinson is in central KS, it has been bone dry this winter south of a line from central CO to southeast NE, several windstorms have probably blown a lot of soil away too. And they are talking about harvesting winter wheat. Further north there is a pile of snow on the ground awaiting very warm temperatures spreading in this week and most of that snow (in SD and parts of ND) will be gone by mid-week. It may take a few more attempts further north into the prairies.
As evidence of the drought, Garden City KS has seen 0.56″ rainfall since Jan 1 and only 0.01″ since Mar 1. In contrast to further north, temperatures have been more variable, not in the deep freeze but average closer to normal with some very warm days in the mix. These very dry conditions gradually change to snow covered moving north through Nebraska to peak snow cover in the Dakotas. But there likely isn’t a lot of moisture in this snow cover, perhaps an inch or so, and when it melts a lot of it will also just evaporate into this warm, dry air mass coming in. So those farmers planting summer crops will face rather dry soil conditions by planting time.
Kansas is basically semi-desert with a lot of irrigation and the odd wet year. Without us around it would be a vast grassland steppe with trees in river valleys. And many millions of bison. Nebraska is more prone to variable rainfall but the southeast quadrant of that state is currently included in the KS-OK-west TX drought zone. It’s going to be like the 1930s except with better soil conservation. I would prepare for some extremes in the prairies all spring and summer. Seems like this hot, dry regime setting up will eventually begin to dominate there also, but not until after there’s quite a battle between air masses given that the arctic cold has pretty much taken up residence over western Canada and is still there some distance to the north this week. It will no doubt be back a few times before end of May. My guess is that June will be very wet in the northern Rockies of US and Alberta, parts of SK, then it will flip to hot/dry.
We had only a third of our normal March rain this year here in BC’s Lower Mainland. A pretty dry Winter as well.
Except for east Texas, everything west of the Mississippi is semi arid, arid or desert. If nature doesn’t help, then, arid conditions are to be expected.
Take your pick: its either geo-engineering/chemtrails or Old Testament style drought.
Droughts are cyclical and various areas can be affected very differently. Currently, the U.S. droughts are limited to the middle of the country.
The University of Nevada publishes a detailed and comprehensive “drought severity index.”
The U.S. as a whole is unusually wet, if anything. Don’t look for signs of climate change here!
This sounds crazy, but I would like to see wind pattern/speed satellite data before and after the windmills. Just out of curiosity.
Remember the Santa Anna winds?
The winds that been drying up that part of California, always, as a matter of pattern of winds from the time when it was a dry desert.
You can irrigate, when you use all the water at hand and there is nothing downstream, it’s not weather, it’s not climate, it’s probably you insisting that you can conquer nature.
As one looks back on the eons of geological time, nature will win every time, it will destroy and renew, it will do what nature does.
A man, as it were, can fight it or collaborate with nature.
It should be recognizable by now that if he chooses a fight, he will lose, maybe not today or next week, though he will lose. Guaranteed as the day follows the night, as illustrated in much of the southwest
Of course there is so much more to it.
Only the wise guys will put a happy face on it and tell you that you don’t know dick and that’s that.
Invalid anecdotal data. And completely irrelevant. There’s always somewhere on earth that has crop failures. Sometimes local. Sometimes larger. And a big water dump can change it quick and May or may not result in a decent crop of another kind a few
Months later depending on time of year
Grains are fungible commodities so it all evens out.
Dumba$$ farmer: You are EXACTLY right!
Exactly.
And little pet rodents are fun-gerbil commodities.