Historic US drought deepens

By: Naomi Spencer

Source: Global Research

The National Drought Mitigation Center on Thursday rated more than a fifth of the contiguous United States as in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought. The dry spell, coupled with the hottest year on record, threatens widespread crop failures in the world’s largest agricultural producer.

Nearly 40 million acres of corn are withering in the most severe drought in more than half a century. Nearly 9 out of every 10 acres of corn are under drought.

In the span of last week, the size of the most severely drought-stricken region jumped by more than 30 million acres. The US Department of Agriculture last week added 218 counties to its list of disaster areas, now encompassing 1,584 counties in 32 states.

The USDA has compared the disaster to the drought of 1988, when the rural small farm economy all but collapsed. In terms of geographic scale, the drought is on par with 1934, one of the worst years of the Dust Bowl.

Data from the National Weather Service indicate that July rainfall was less than 50 percent of normal throughout the entire mid-section of the country. Monthly temperatures were 5 to 10°F above normal. Many areas saw all-time heat records set in 1936 or 1934 broken in July; Rockford, Illinois broke a record high set in 1921.

Writing for the US Drought Monitor Thursday, Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) noted that the Midwest is “impacted not only by oppressive heat, but also by depleted soil moisture, desiccated pastures and widespread crop damages, livestock culling and elevated fire risk.” The situation has created a feedback of heat and dryness, resulting in the formation of a heat dome over the region.

Heat domes, which are indicative of climate change, have had significant environmental impacts in other areas of the world recently. In Greenland, a heat dome is the suspected cause of a dramatic spike in surface melting of the region’s ice sheet in July (See: “Melting of Greenland ice sheet likely caused by global warming”).

Speaking about the situation in the US Great Plains, Svoboda observed that the region “can’t seem to shake off last year’s drought,” having “now been dragged back into it this year.”

“In addition to the large geographic footprint of this year’s drought,” he added, “the quick onset and rapid ramping up of intensity, coupled with extreme temperatures and subsequent impacts, has really left an imprint on those affected and has set this drought apart from anything we have seen at this scale over the past several decades.”

Many livestock ranchers, confronted by barren grazing land and exorbitant fodder prices, are left little choice but to liquidate their herds. While grain producers have federal insurance against crop failure, ranchers do not. The USDA’s livestock insurance program was allowed to expire last year.

According to USDA figures, the nation’s cattle herd stands at 97.8 million, which is the lowest headcount since it began keeping records on cattle in 1973. Because cows take several years to raise to market, many ranchers are sending off calves early to the slaughterhouses in anticipation that the crisis will be an extended one.

Warning of higher consumer prices, the livestock industry has called for the Obama administration to suspend the federal renewable fuel standard. The mandate essentially guarantees 40 percent of the US corn crop to ethanol fuel producers, which is contributing to tight feed supplies and high stock prices.

Prices on the Chicago Board of Trade continue to rise on the poor crop news, both in the US and in other critical growing regions worldwide. Soybeans have risen 34 percent, to $16.13 a bushel; corn is up 23 percent for the year, at $7.92 a bushel. A survey of commodities analysts by Bloomberg News found most expect corn prices to continue to grow. “Hedge funds are holding the biggest bet on higher corn prices since September and almost the largest wager on costlier soybeans since at least 2006,” the news service noted citing federal data.

The World Bank and other organizations have cautioned that speculation could produce shortages in import-dependent countries and popular unrest like that of the food crisis of 2008.

The Economic Research Service, which tracks food insecurity in developing countries, has estimated that more than 800 million people will not receive adequate food in 2012, and that the world’s hungry will rise by 37 million in the coming years.

On Friday, USDA chief economist Joseph Glauber issued a statement in Beijing warning that China would face higher soybean prices. Since June, soybean prices have risen 23 percent. “We will see how bad the yields are next week when we put out our first survey-based estimate, but it looks very bad,” he said. “There is no question that yields will be very low.” China is the world’s largest importer of soybeans.

Countries dependent on imported staple crops are most at risk for price shocks. Egypt, the world’s top wheat importer, is particularly vulnerable to a poor corn crop in the US; when corn production falls in the US, American buyers increase their purchases of wheat as a substitute. As a result, there is less wheat available for export from the US, which pushes up global wheat prices. The world’s other wheat-producing regions—including Russia, Canada, and Australia—are all stricken by weather disasters like the US.

Andrei Sizov, head of the agricultural consulting firm SovEcon and newly appointed head of the Russian Food Security Commission, estimated this week that the Russian wheat harvest would not exceed 80 million tons. The Institute for Agricultural Market Studies puts the harvest at only 77 million tons. The country generally consumes 72 million tons domestically.

The slim margin of excess grain has raised the possibility of an export ban. In 2010, Russia imposed a ban after its wheat crop sustained heavy drought and wildfire damage. The decision, which tightened supply and fed a speculative rally on grain markets, contributed to social upheavals in the Middle East, culminating in the Egyptian uprising of February 2011.

In spite of the risk of renewed social explosions, as well as new restrictions by the World Trade Organization on export bans, Food Security Commission head Sirov told the Moscow News, “If the government decides that Russia needs to restrict its exports, they will find measures to do that. It could say, for example, that it is a matter of food security. Ukraine has restricted its exports and it is a WTO member.” Russia is due to enter the WTO next month.

A major drought is also tightening its grip on India. On Thursday, the government confirmed that monsoon rains are likely to be far below average. Halfway through the rainy season, precipitation is 20 percent below average. In 2009, India saw 23 percent below average rainfall and a consequent spike in food prices.

Ongoing US drought to drive up food prices

Source: Press TV (US Desk)

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/252884.html

Most of the U.S. Midwest remains in the grips of the worst drought in half a century as the outlook for world food supplies and prices worsened.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Agriculture Department added another 76 counties to its list of areas designated for disaster aid, bringing the total to 1,369 counties in 31 states across the country. Two-thirds of the United States is now in mild or extreme drought, the agency said.

Forecasters said that after weeks of hot, dry weather the northern Corn Belt from eastern Nebraska through northern Illinois was likely to see a second day of scattered rain. But in the southern Midwest, including Missouri and most of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, more hot, dry weather was likely.

"Most of these areas need an excess of 10 inches of rain to break the drought," said Jim Keeney, a National Weather Service meteorologist, referring to Kansas through Ohio. "This front is not expected to bring much more than a 1/2 to 1 inch in any particular area. It's not a drought buster by any means."

The central and southern Midwest saw more temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday, with St Louis at 101 F.

"There's no change in the drought pattern, just thunderstorms shifting around," said Andy Karst, a meteorologist for World Weather Inc. "There are no soaking rains seen through August 8." IBNLive.com

HIGHLIGHTS

The U.S. Agriculture Department forecast that food prices would now out-pace other consumer costs through 2013 as drought destroys crops and erodes supplies. Reuters

On Wednesday, the government said it expected the record-breaking weather to drive up the price for groceries next year, including milk, beef and chicken. The drought is now affecting 88 percent of the corn crop, a staple of processed foods and animal feed as well as the nation’s leading farm export. NY Times

The drought now covers around 60 percent of the continental United States, the largest area since the epic droughts of the 1930s and 1950s. Huffington Post

The drought also threatens a recurrence of the 2008 global food crisis, when soaring prices set off riots and unrest to parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, food experts warn. CattleNetwork

Two million children face starvation

Children suffer the most from the worst drought in decades in the Horn of Africa. (file photo)

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/193043.html

Nearly two million children are facing starvation as the worst famine in 60 years continues to batter the Horn of Africa region.

UN sources said Sunday that these children, all under five, are just a small fraction of close to 13 million people facing hunger in the Horn of Africa.

At least 30,000 Africans have already starved to death as the region experiences its worst drought in decades. In many places, there has been no rain for the past two years.

The UN has declared famine in parts of southern Somalia and says the situation will get worse unless international aid comes in soon.

In Somalia, where a child is said to be dying every six minutes, three new districts were declared famine zones last week. Almost five million people are now at risk of starvation, but help has been hampered by continued violence.

Somalia has been worst affected by the famine in the Horn of Africa, as people in parts of Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti are also affected by the epidemic.

Experts warn of Somalia catastrophe

A Somali woman hands her severely malnourished child to a Ugandan medical officer as she climbs out of an armored personnel carrier ambulance in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, July 15, 2011.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/189305.html

A full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Somalia, experts say, as the African country suffers what the United Nations has described as the worst drought in decades.

"We are no longer talking about a humanitarian crisis or a humanitarian emergency," said Jens Oppermann, the country director of Action against Hunger (Action Contre La Faim).

"We are seeing this as a humanitarian catastrophe," he told AFP on Friday.

Tens of thousands of Somali refugees are flooding camps in Ethiopia and Kenya in search of food after several seasons without rain decimated livestock and killed crops in Somalia.

According to the UN, it is estimated that a quarter of Somalia's population of 7.5 million is now either internally displaced or living outside the country as refugees.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday issued an urgent call for aid amid the deepening humanitarian crisis.

Ban pointed out that more than 11 million people in the African state are facing the worst drought in decades.

The UN chief urged the countries of the world to donate over USD 1.5 billion to pay for life-saving programs in the region.

“We must do everything we can to prevent this crisis deepening. The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. We cannot afford to wait,” Ban further explained.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew the country's former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world.

Massive wildfire rages on in US

The Las Conchas fire burns near the Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M., Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/186996.html

A huge wildfire in north of the US state of New Mexico has grown larger, as fire officials try to keep it from spreading onto the Los Alamos nuclear lab, reports say.

The so-called Las Conchas, New Mexico's second largest wildfire on record so far, has burned nearly 93,000 acres of thick pine woodlands on the slopes of the Jemez Mountains since erupting.

The fire started on Sunday near the Los Alamos National Laboratory and comes second in comparison to the state's biggest blaze, the Dry Lakes Fire of 2003, which scorched more than 94,000 acres of the Gila National Forest in the southwestern US state of New Mexico, Reuters reported on Thursday.

Las Conchas, believed to have been sparked by a downed power line, has burned mostly in the Santa Fe National Forest and got near the Los Alamos weapons laboratory and the adjacent town with some 10,000 residents.

The US government sent a plane equipped with radiation monitors over the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory on Wednesday as a 110-square-mile wildfire burned at the lab's doorstep, putting thousands of scientific experiments on hold for days.

"We're seeing fire behavior we've never seen down here, and it's really aggressive," Los Alamos County Fire Chief Douglas Tucker told reporters, adding that earlier hopes of lifting evacuations in the area by this weekend had been dashed.

The Los Alamos complex contains 3 metric tons of highly radioactive weapons-grade plutonium, stored in concrete and steel vaults in the basement floor of a building near the center of the complex, with an air-containment system surrounding it.

Lab officials say those storage structures are fire safe and pose no threat to public safety.

By midday Friday, Las Conchas is expected to capture the dubious title of the largest single forest fire on record in New Mexico.

'Food inflation threatens millions in Asia'

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/176765.html

According to an ADB report released on Tuesday, domestic food price inflation hit an average of 10 percent in developing Asian countries at the start of the year.

The costs of essentials such as wheat, corn, sugar, edible oils, dairy products and meat underwent a double-digit rise, while the price of rice -- one of Asia's staple foods -- is also expected to peak.

If the situation is not contained, this can push at least 64 million people -- or nearly 2 percent of Asia's 3.3 billion people -- below the poverty line of USD 1.25 a day, the Manila-based bank warned.

Coupled with skyrocketing oil prices the current food price hike could also reduce economic growth in Asia by up to 1.5 percent this year.

While Asian economies have emerged strong from the 2008 global financial crisis, the rising cost of living has become a big concern in the region.

ADB's chief economist Rhee Changyong said Tuesday that if the global food crisis is left unchecked it could even undermine recent gains made in Asia's poverty reduction.

To stem the looming crisis many Asian countries have so far imposed export bans on their products, a practice that is not helping the cause, according to Rhee.

Instead, nations should strengthen social safety nets, increase investments in agricultural infrastructure and expand storage facilities, the ADB's senior economist said.

He added that these measures will ensure that food produce is not wasted, thus helping to keep prices in check.

World Bank: Food prices near dangerous levels

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/165804.html

The World Bank says the global hike in food prices have reached dangerous levels, pushing some 44 million more people into poverty in just over six months.

"Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world," AFP quoted World Bank chief Robert Zoellick as saying in a recent statement.

"The price hike is already pushing millions of people into poverty, and putting stress on the most vulnerable, who spend more than half of their income on food," he went on to say.

According to the latest edition of the bank's Food Price Watch, prices rose by 15 percent between October 2010 and January 2011.

According to reports, 100 million people became prone to extreme poverty in the 2008 food crisis. The World Bank defines “extreme poverty” as living on less than $1.25 a day.

The bank's food-price index rose 15 percent between October and January, led by wheat, sugar and edible oil. The level is only three percent below the 2008 peak, when surging costs sparked riots in more than a dozen countries.

Corn has surged 86 percent in the past year, and wheat is up 69 percent after drought and floods damaged crops from Russia to Argentina. The Food and Agriculture Organization's World Food Price Index reached a record high in January for a second consecutive month

Heat wave puts Argentina on high alert

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/157707.html


Argentina is in the grip of a sizzling heat wave that has left millions in hellish conditions, while the northern hemisphere fights freezing temperatures.

On Tuesday temperatures soared to 36 C (97 F) in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, creating scenes the total opposite of those in snowbound Europe and the United States.

This, coupled with power outages and a fuel shortage, has forced Argentina's National Meteorological Service to issue a high alert for Buenos Aires and its surrounding areas.

Authorities believe that the heat-wave poses health risk for the Argentineans.

"The city of Buenos Aires has a summer average of 90 deaths per day but, for example, during the heat wave at the beginning of 2001 it went up to 250 deaths in a single day," the weather service warned on its website.

Meanwhile, Argentine Health Minister Juan Manzur announced on Tuesday that high temperatures are expected to continue throughout the week and advised people to stay out of sun and drink lots of water.

The heat-wave has also caused concerns for the country's agriculture sector.

Farmers believe that the hot weather along with the decrease in rainfall could continue until March, endangering grain exports -- one of Argentina's main sources of income.

Adding to the crisis, the climatic phenomenon La Nina has meanwhile spread drought across large parts of Argentina's richest agricultural regions.

The heat wave has also set a "historic record" in electricity consumption across the capital.

This has led to 24-hour-long outages in numerous Buenos Aires neighborhoods and urban districts, frustrating residents and triggering bitter protests in the festive holiday season.

Critics lay the blame squarely on government policies that have deterred investment in the energy sector.

'Half of Niger's population hungry'

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=138851§ionid=351020506


Niger is facing the worst hunger crisis in its history, with almost half of the population (or 7.3 million people) in desperate need of food, the UN's World Food (WFP) Program says.

The WFP says 17 percent of the African nation's children, or one in five, are acutely malnourished.

The charity Helen Keller International (HKI) has accused the international community of failing to respond effectively to repeated appeals for help for Niger.

HKI's Africa director, Shawn Baker, stated, "Famine is a very loaded word. But I think if you look in terms of the number of children affected, the way the livestock have been decimated, and the population movements that were seen earlier in the year, you certainly could consider a famine situation," reported BBC.

The UN reported that more than 67,000 people lost their homes after severe rains in the past week. The River Niger, the 3rd largest river in Africa, reached its highest level for 80 years, said the regional river authority, the ABN.

Not only are many village people going short of food, but their livestock, which are their only real assets, have died off.

Global warming cuts crops, ups famine

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=138106§ionid=3510212


Scientists have warned of the effect of global warming on rice yields, saying climate change will make it harder to feed the world's growing population.

A group of scientists studied records from 227 farms in six important rice-producing countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, India, and China and found out that the yields have fallen by 10-20% over the last 25 years in some locations, BBC reported on Monday.

In a similar study in 2004, researchers in the Philippines discovered that the rice yields were dropping by 10% for every 1 degree centigrade increase in nighttime temperature.

According to the findings, global warming is cutting rice yields in many parts of Asia, and still more decline is predicted.

This is while the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has announced that one billion people are already hungry in the world and as the result, the UN has established an online petition to tackle the world's hunger epidemic.

However, scientists are very pessimistic about the future of cutting yields.

In another study on fully-irrigated farms that grow "green revolution" crops, researchers found compelling evidence for dropping of rice yields.

The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that as the daily minimum temperature increases, or as nights get hotter, rice yields drop.

"There have been some recent studies on US crops, in particular corn, that showed the drop-off after that threshold is substantial," the lead researcher Jarrod Welch of the University of California, San Diego said.

According to environmentalists, warmer climates will bring changes to rainfall, causing drought, adding to famine and hunger.