Around this time of year I start getting emails and calls about conditions and bird populations, here in NW Kansas. Here are a few pics of failed corn and beans, and worst of all hayed CRP's. Since there is no grass, USDA has allowed haying. Bird pops are OK right now, but none of the above bodes well for next year. If the failed corn is left standing it will provide some feed and cover for the coming winter. If not?






Ethanol plants are shutting down, and hang on to your hats on beef prices

LD, I told my wife this morning I wish we could send some or our rain to Kansas. We have been soaked the last couple of weeks. Gil

ALSO Please send it to Amarillo Texas

Chuck,
has this years hatch survived the heat?

Check it out http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
Steve

Triple digit temps and wild fires have plagued my neck of the woods for quite a while. We've had a lot of folks lose there homes and barns. Water rationing in some areas too.

Chuck, I don't see any way in the world that a healthy bird population could survive into the fall given the lack of a food source. We've become real pros on the subject here in the Texas Panhandle. Lord help us!

Reports from Southwest Nebraska that is suffering through the same conditions as in North West Kansas are that there are still good numbers of birds due to last years mild winter. The birds are surviving on grass hoppers, other insects and weed seeds and are not affected by lack of food. Main problem is the heat and lack of morning dew on the vegetation plus shrinking supplies of standing water as the intermittent streams have dried up and the ponds are drying up quickly. The next three months will determine if the grasses can come back and provide winter cover for the winter.

I gather that there are not many game birds in the Sahara. But no need to worry - global warming is just a fraud perpetrated by greedy scientists.

One bad year does not the dust bowl make
http://www.kansashistory.us/dustbowl.html

Black Sunday, Dodge City April 11, 1935



Ad Astra Per Aspera!

To paraphrase the late W. C. Fields "All things considered I would rather be in Kansas"

Hate to hear about the Midwest. Hope things work out okay in the end. On a positive note, we getting plenty of rain down here in South Alabama. 5 inches on Monday, 3/4" on Tues, and another 1" today.

The quail woods on my Georiga lease are looking great!!!!

That is true but this is the second year of severe drought and the effects are cumulative. Not only are crops failing but we are losing our native grasses and recovery will take years or decades to recover.

I live 40 miles South of Athens,Georgia and it is pitiful how little rain we have gotten the last three years! My pond is the lowest i have ever seen it! Bobby

I talked to a buddy of mine in south central South Dakota last week. He said the conditions there are the same as last dollar reports from Kansas.

Corn & beans are bad & the CRP is opened to haying & grazing.

Could be a tough bird season. But that's nothing compared to what the farmers are going through. My thoughts & best wishes are with the farmers. I hope they all make it through OK!!!

There may indeed be global warming taking place, it has done so and then reversed itself, in cycles, for thousands of years.What I take exception to is the idea that man is causing it.

I have a thousand acres of non-irrigated row crops every year that depend totally on rainfall to grow. I am intensely interested in rainfall patterns, dry and wet cycles. There is exactly the same amount of water on this old earth that there was when it was created. Not a gallon more or less. When one part of the planet is experiencing drought there are others that experience too much rainfall. It's all about the distribution of that set amount of water.

I bemoan what drought does to gamebird populations, but accept it as being part of the natural state of things. Man just needs to get over himself and realize he is not the most powerful thing in the universe, and that everything does not revolve around him.

SRH

Stan I agree with you wholeheartedly. The arrogance of some who think that whatever we insignificant humans can do will upset the enormous force of nature.

Yep. Global warming caused by humans is a scientific hoax all right. Just because 95% of all scientists that study it confirm it is proof positive that education is worthless. And just because that scientific theory is being shown not just in the US in a big way for the last three years and virtually around the world, coincidence. Greenland glaciers melting, not important. Polar ice caps melting, ha. Just a normal phase. Rush told me so.

Here's what's wrong with your 3 year Global Warming dataset: you are taking 3 years of data & expanding it for 3 million years. You are looking at a minute subset and true scientists understand sig figs and would not make such a claim other than for political gain.


Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Well, Hells Bells, lets take our shotguns and move to Greenland. The Vikings used to live there and farm it.

I do not care about the global warming debate. Other things are more to the point. One flaw in all the Global warming warning is when the often repeated hottest in 500 years ago statement is mentioned. Too easy for some to point out that total human population 500 years ago might have been 100 million and total SUV numbers zero. So maybe we are to blame and maybe not. Climates change over time. Who cares? Even if the science adds up to proof of Global warming think about what is going to happen in the next 40 years. Change is coming and we will not like it.

There will remain two minor facts. Fact one is that China and India do not care. They are not going to be able to stop increasing their population growth and they want to raise their standard of living. You tell two billion people to stop having sex and to keep their standard of living low so they do not create more greenhouse gases. Combined they are a third of the total population. People generate increasing amounts of pollution as they raise their standard of living. We may have been the largest CO2 producer today but every study I have seen has China passing us by as they raise their standard of living. India is behind them but not by far. Cars are becoming a more common thing in China and India. Put ten or twenty million cars more on the road every year and think of all the pollution they will generate.

Fact two is that today's seven billion people will be more than 10.5 billion in 2050. We do not have the capacity to feed 10.5 billion people right now and no one can figure out how we will do it then. US food production is almost maxed out and the rest of the world does not have enough reserve to take up the slack.

We have been thinking that oil will be the cause of the next great war if one starts. Food or lack of food will the be reason. So stop with the debate about Global warming and start figuring out how to feed all those people.

Barry Sotero A.K.A. Barack Hussein Obama will save them by giving them all Food Stamps!

Didnt take long for the guys with the silver plates in their skulls to take this political did it? We actually seem to have a lot of healthy birds, got rain every night for the past 7-8 days. Too late for the dryland stuff, but good for the birds. Lots of new weed growth in the stubbles..next year is what worries me...

I had no idea sex caused greenhouse gas. But, it all makes perfect sense now. What are real estate prices like in Greenland?

Actually greenhouse gas causes sex...

Years ago as a young kid I discovered that intestinal gas causes the opposite.

I recall hearing somewhere, quite some time ago, that because of population growth, the wheels start coming off right around 2050. Makes me worry for kids and grandkids, but I'll be 105 then, so it probably won't make much difference to me. You get rid of the big wars and conquer many formerly common diseases--all of which sounds good--and you end up with a whole lot of people we may not be able to feed.

Back to the drought. Grouse country of the Upper Midwest is in pretty good shape. Up here in northern WI, we're actually above average for rainfall this summer. It's been hotter than normal, but hot up here is 90 rather than 100+, so it's all relative.

If atmostpheric CO2 causes the greenhouse effect then CO2 is the cause of global warming. But if people cause the CO2 that causes global warming then people are the cause. But if unprotected sex creates people then unprotected sex (and penicillin) is the cause of global warming.

it ain't helped my sex life a bit....

Drought is bad here in se Nebraska. Dry land corn is mostly dead, mine might make 20 bu, made 200 last year. Thankfully most of mine is irrigated, spent 12000 on diesel for one 160 acre field, paying for fuel has not been fun. I'm seeing more quail/pheasants this year, I think the hatch/s have been good, no rain for a couple months and day after day of 95 to 105 temps.

He just hates when I disrespect Obama... what could that mean... hmmmmm.

We didn't need a drought to wipe out pheasants here. We have something worse. We have the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

TwiceBarrel - yep a few human beings seems insignificant. But a tiny handful of people in a few thousand years reduced North and South America's large mammal fauna from diversity resembling modern Africa to the vestige we have left today. And that with just spears, bows and fire. Now we are up to seven billion, heading toward ten, and most of the earth and the oceans have been been massively degraded.

Raimey - not sure what you mean by three years of data. All datasets going back hundreds of thousand of years consistently show the same patterns - there is more CO2 than ever, and it is hotter than it has been as far back as the data go.

But what do all those pointy-headed scientists know compared to Rush and the oil companies?

There is not more CO2 in the air then ever. There have been numerous periods when the CO2 was higher then todays levels. One of them being during an Ice Age.

Man is contributing to the decline of some game bird populations, to be sure, but not by increasing the amount of CO2, or causing weather extremes. It is by destroying the birds' habitat to build more d----d parking lots, malls and sports complexes.

Over 3,000,000 acres of farmland are lost every year to urban sprawl. That's 5.7 acres a minute for you folks in Berkeley. How much of that you reckon is game bird habitat?

SRH

Laugh all you want about my earlier post. We all need a laugh. People do cause pollution. Are greenhouse gases a problem? I do not know. But too many people could be. Did man cause this drought. Blame it on Bush if you want to or me if you wish. But it is very, very dry on my farms.

I own three farms with over 700 acres in corn, in drought conditions and without a heck of a lot of irrigation it would not yield 20 bushels to the acre. I do not farm them but do have a share of the yield. The contrast between where it is watered and where it does not reach is stark. Those without water will be hard pressed or ruined.

But I worry more about next year and those which follow than any one year. In my lifetime the population has gone from less than two billion to over seven billion. And in my potential lifetime it will top ten billion. Food production has gone up but not by five times. Population is out of control and that bothers me more than Climate Change. It can not go up forever and the future looks grim.

If farmers are forced to plant every acre to feed more people where will our CPR come from? You may have birds this year but will you next or in ten years? Do you think pheasants or any other game will do better with no CPR, no cover and no edge cover? Game birds live in what to many is surplus land. There will be no surplus land if you have to feed ten billion people.

People need to eat and farmers must make a profit so I do not blame them. I do not get caught up in the debate about Global warming and is it real. Climate changes over time or there never would have been an Ice Age, or a mini Ice Age a few hundred years ago. It gets hotter or dryer over time and then the trend reverses. But never before have we had to feed seven billion or ten in the next 40 years. All types of wildlife will suffer to feed ten billion. Perhaps to the point that hunting wild birds of any type becomes a thing of the past. That is a sad thought.

Say we have been collecting atmospheric data for 100 years, so show me data for 100 million years & we'll talk. Who can say this has not occurred prior; what was it like before the dinosaur's demise. Tell me about the cooling period just before the War of Northern Aggression. The magnetic poles will change and so might the title angle, so have the poles experienced their greatest weight and are not shifting back to nominal weights? Who knows as we just do not have enough data to speculate. Speculate we can, but to develop a model and predict the future we cannot. The data is much over sampled as 1000 years of date, albeit more like 100 years or cycles, is pale in comparison to the required 100 million years.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

I just looked and it appears we have been keeping atmospheric data for some 150 years. I monitor subsidence & upheaval of the crust from time to time and if we could produce atmospheric data from the glacier's retreat would be a start. 150 years of data vs. however long one things the blue marble has been spinning is the core of the debate.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

During the Carboniferous period, roughly 300 million years ago, the atmosphere was far richer in CO2 than it is today. The average temperatures were far higher at that time than they are today.

The earth spent 20 million years as a complete ball of ice. It has had its surface completely covered by water, with no land whatsoever fr periods of millions of years.

The earth is a work in progress. It changes. The fauna and flora contribute to that change. Including man. Our time here as civilized humans is but a millisecond in the earth's lifespan. I think KY Jon is on the right track talking about population and food.

The issue of global warming is a phoney issue. It may be happening but efforts to stop it are a foolish waste of time. We should be adapting.....

But who was taking the readings in the previous 100 million period, some Al Gore predecessor, who had the internet in mind? We just do not know. Ground truth is most needed we cannot predict the next 100 years with 150 years of data; absurd.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

So everyone here in North America had a mild winter, and it was the hottest July on record, I just hope that Al Gore's theory on Global warming isn't true because I would hate to see him right on anything he has ever said.

So what does all this "see what I know" have to do with the Kansas drought??? And KY John it's "CRP", not CPR.....Rained again last nite..

A point or two re weather (since we're discussing the drought): Yes, last year was a mild winter most places, with significantly below average snowfall. And July was the single hottest month on record across the United States. Makes you think maybe Gore was onto something . . .

But then there's this: Prior to last winter, Iowa had suffered 5 winters in a row where the snowfall was either average (30") or above. In 3 of those 5 winters, snowfall was at least 25% above normal, and in one case it was nearly 60% above normal. So isolating last winter as an indication of global warming doesn't resonate well with Iowans.

Likewise, and of equal importance to bird hunters, rainfall for the months of April and May was at or above the long-term average of 8" for 4 out of those 5 years. So, although Iowa has lost habitat (down from 1.9 to 1.3 million acres of CRP, 2003-11), it's weather that has really hammered bird numbers over the last several years. Snowy winter + wet spring = double whammy for a lot of upland species.

And concerning long-term trends in weather: As several have remarked, we only have reliable weather data for about 150 years. However, prior to 2005, looking at available data, Iowa had never experienced 5 winters in succession with above average snowfall. Makes one wonder about the "coming Ice Age" that was the cover headline on Time magazine back in the 70's.

As for feeding the world's population, it's not entirely a question of how much land we can put into production. If we were still getting the same crop yields today we got back in 1950, we'd be in serious trouble feeding the current population. However, where 100 bu/acre corn used to be a very good crop, 200 bu/acre is now quite common. So farmers have become a lot more efficient. But there's definitely a limit, with our rapidly expanding population.

If anybody wonders how the worlds changed over the last... billion years, check out this website http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/

All these folks say "Save the planet". Mother earth don't need saving, within a million years, comparable to a fart in human time, anything we do to the planet will be healed. The only thing is, we'll be gone.

Steve

How many realize it costs over $10 a gallon to make ethanol so we can breath cleaner air.....read bull hockey!!

If it was stopped the ranchers would'nt have to pay over $8 a bushell to feed their cattle.

We would save money on gasoline and food.

What kind of ranchers feed anything that cost 8 bucks per bushel? None of the ones I know...Ethanol is a bad idea, but it doesnt cost 10 bucks per gallon to produce...Plants are SHUTTING DOWN because of the cost of corn..

I don't know how much corn costs, but I do know it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the gallon of ethanol contains.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that is kind of stupid. No government subsidies equals no ethanol and less greenhouse gas.

Ethanol was is a dumb idea....

Ethanol does not appear to be the brightest idea when corn is consistently over $5/bushel, and it's way past that now. However, when ethanol got started, corn was down in the $2-3/bu range, and farmers were happy as heck to have another market, which made their corn worth more.

The idea behind ethanol, however, was not strictly economic. It also focused on energy independence. In other words, not counting on unreliable foreign sources to keep providing us with oil. By creating an ethanol industry, we now have the capability of making at least some of the fuel on which our vehicles run, should there be a problem with the supply of oil. It is certainly not THE answer to energy independence, but it's one aspect of moving us in that direction.

The ethanol story isn't yet finished. Corn is used because it stores huge amounts of sugar in the form of sugar that converts into starch. The starch can easily be converted back to sugar and that is used in fermentation to produce ethanol.

However, substances such as cellulose are also starches (starch is a polymer of sugars) but are hard to break down to sugar so they can be fermented.

There's a lot of research (gov't sponsored) to find ways to economically hydrolyze cellulose into substituent sugars so we can get ethanol from them. I think some of the work is promising - it's not something I follow too closely but it would be truly a breakthru if we could take, for example, trash trees and brush and economically derive ethanol from them. There are some grasses (I forgot which) that already are promising.

It isn't difficult to break down cellulose to its sugars, it's just that it is not economically possible to compete with corn or with oil.

You are right it is CRP not CPR. That might explain why my CRP did not save that fellows life. By the way there is no 'h" in my Jon. My folks were too poor to buy a "h". We have had rain the last few days but it is a case of too little too late for too many I am afraid. Beans might make but corn is done here if you did not have a irrigation system.

Going to bush hog two areas and disc a third area and see if we can not shoot a few doves over the burned up corn. At least these areas are just at the extreme corner where the pivot system could not reach instead of the entire field. Might have to see if a wheat cover crop is needed to prevent soil erosion.

I did not intend to stir up a debate and regret my adding to the fire in such a dry year. Flamers are present enough without anymore gas on this site these days. They grade for spelling, grammar and punctuation. My third grade nightmare is coming back to me. Keep well.....

I will be happy to send anyone in need of rain, some of the daily rain we have been wading through here in Maine the last week or so.

PM me with your address.

Now, I have to go and clean some more mildew off my shoes.

That is switchgrass, Gnomon.

We're getting loads of rain, too, now. But, it just started in the couple weeks. We have had so many dry summers here that almost no one plants dryland corn anymore. If it's not under pivots it is just not planted. When corn shot up in price several years ago, so did fertilizer and seed prices. Few can afford to gamble what it costs to grow an acre of corn to see it burn up.

Corn is eight dollars on the CBOT, but that won't last, I predict. All ethanol plants are losing money at these prices, and chicken growers, too. High prices will cure high prices as demand drops.

SRH

Quote
"
The idea behind ethanol, however, was not strictly economic. It also focused on energy independence. In other words, not counting on unreliable foreign sources to keep providing us with oil. By creating an ethanol industry, we now have the capability of making at least some of the fuel on which our vehicles run, should there be a problem with the supply of oil. It is certainly not THE answer to energy independence, but it's one aspect of moving us in that direction."


There happens to be more than a 'Saudi Arabia' in the western states that the 'greenies' in Washington won't let us touch.

Fair enough, so far as it goes, but the result starts to turn out to be that we can starve while stuck in traffic while driving to no place special.

Eh.....OK...?????

I won't be surprised if corn hits $10/bu this year. Much of the crop across the Midwestern "corn belt" got cooked in the heat and drought this summer.

One of the uses of ethanol is as a substitute for MBTE which is an anti-detonation or anti-knock compound. Wikipedia article implies that un-subsidized ethanol can't compete with MBTE. I believe MBTE replaced lead in gasoline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MBTE

"MTBE is a gasoline additive, used as an oxygenate to raise the octane number. Its use is controversial in the US and declining in that country in part because of its occurrence in groundwater and legislation favoring ethanol. Worldwide production of MTBE has been constant at about 18 million tons/y (2005) owing to growth in Asian markets which are less subject to ethanol subsidies."

Not advocating or endorsing anything.

Speaking as a farmer who grows corn to sell to the market every year, it would probably be a bad thing. $10 corn would cause many end users to go broke and close their doors, reducing the demand so badly that it might take years to recover.

It probably won't go that high, anyway. The USDA August 10 crop report, that the market was anxiously awaiting, contained no news concerning the crop that the market did not already know. The market was down after the report, indicating that the news of the drought is old news now, and that most of the considerations for it has already been factored into the market.

SRH

Stan, what's milo running per bushel? Last year was high enough but I'm sure it will be even higher this year. Fortunately, still have 3000 lbs left over from last season. Supplemental feeding quail hunting courses isnt cheap...

Adam

thanks Stan- had a neuron black-out!

According to a Scientific American article some time ago switchgrass ethanol returns about 5 times the energy needed to produce it.

Not too bad if true

If it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the gallon of ethanol can produce itself, how does that help energy self sufficiency?

Here is an interesting summary of some biofuel:

http://www.energyfuturecoalition.org/biofuels/fact_ethanol.htm#4

Apparently it takes a gallon of oil to produce 12-20 gallons of ETOH. Since ethanol (ETOH) has 2/3 the energy of gasoline that becomes about 8-13 gallon-equivalents.

After distillation the leftovers are dried and used for cattle feed and apparently that drying uses a lot of the energy. The actual alcohol production uses much less.

deleted

Adam,

Milo (grain sorghum) typically has sold for 80% of the current spot price for corn. However, that is an old rule of thumb that was really put in place for milo being sold to mills. That said, when it is sold in small truckloads, or wagon loads, to quail plantations the price is closer to the actual price of corn.

This is the first year in the past several that I have not planted any. Prices of other commodities just didn't favor milo for me. I have sold nearly all I have grown to quail plantations for supplemental feeding, and they are calling me regularly wanting to get it lined up for this winter, but I just won't have any.

Back to your question. If you had to buy it in this area I would expect it to cost you at least $7.00/bu. More if you need it delivered to your bin.

SRH

My take on it is that it lessens the dependency on foreign oil. Corn, switchgrass, whatever is used, is grown here, processed into fuel here, and used here. IOW, suffiency does not necessarily mean efficiency. I'm not defending ethanol nor bombarding it, just stating how I understand it to be.

IMO, T. Boone Pickens was right about gradually switching over most forms of transportation to burn natural gas, or propane. It is ridiculously cheap (compared to diesel and gasoline) because of the over-abundance of it here, and more efficient ways of extracting it. I ran an 454 c.i. GMC irrigation pump on propane for 31 years with hardly any maintenance. You had to make yourself change the oil, it burned so clean.

SRH

Stan, how much is propane in your area? I heat my house and shop with it and my summer sale fill was $1.05 a gallon.

It's more than that, J.R.B. I think it's over $2.00 (farm price). Haven't bought any since I retired that irrigation pump. Man, I wish I could buy it that cheap! I heat my house with it, too. If I can remember to do it I will give them a call tomorrow and ask.

SRH

One thing in your favor Stan is that you don't use as much for your house in one season as I do in North Dakota. Our state is Siberia in the winter.

The reason we will have a good number of birds THIS year, is that we are feeding them ethanol residue, imported from India and China, paid for by government subidies...Subsidies are exported to these countries through government grants.Carryover birds (good numbers) were protected from Amarillo Mikes deadly shooting last season by Kevlar flight suits provided by George Soros, distributed by Homeland security. EPA regulation will require the use of whole grain shot this year. There! that covers it

Stan, you'd likely be surprised to find out what propane's going for down your way. I just filled my tank for $1.09/gal. That's the lowest price I've seen in years.

You can find some very different figures on what it costs to produce a gallon of ethanol. But what you have to remember is that a gallon of the ethanol blend you put into your gas tank is only 10% ethanol. (Going up to 15% soon, I understand.) And you also have to remember that refining petroleum to make gasoline isn't free either. The oil industry, which (no surprise!) does not like ethanol, likes to make the production of ethanol look as expensive as possible, while being somewhat less than forthcoming about the costs of refining a gallon of gasoline.