Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Why (maybe) it always seems to rain in town

A Purdue University scientist contends that man-made changes to the landscape have affected Indian monsoon rains, and he suggests that land-use decisions play an important role in climate change. Sprawling and packed urban areas are seeing an increase in heavy rainfall, according to the researcher, Dev Niyogi, an associate professor of agronomy and earth and atmospheric sciences.

Consider Houston, Texas, if you want a closer example of this effect.Every summer it seems that parts of the city flood, and the rainfall is generally unrelated to hurricanes. The flooding also can play havoc with crop production around the city.“All the asphalt, concrete and buildings accumulate heat, which rises into the atmosphere and creates a kind of thermal wall,” a Texas Extension worker noted last summer during one of those downpours. “When cool air carrying moisture hits that warm wall, it releases the moisture, and you end up with flooding rain in parts of the metro area and in rural areas where the 2 air masses meet.”

In India, this effect is clearly evident, Niyogi says. Some storms in urban areas have dropped as much as 37 inches of rainfall in a single day.

Analysis of the areas that have received increases in heavy seasonal rainfall, based on Indian Meteorological Department and NASA satellite data, showed that those areas were experiencing fast urban growth, which also describes Houston.

"You only see these types of heavy rainfall events in those areas with heavy urbanization," said Niyogi, whose research on the urban effect was published in the International Journal of Climatology. "The more urbanization spreads in those areas, the more of these heavy rain issues we'll see and the more flooding will become a problem."

Meanwhile, back in the Sierras...

Weekend storms have increased California’s Sierra snowpack – excellent news for farmers in the state’s Central Valley, who depend on winter accumulations for irrigation water in the spring and summer.

California Department of Water Resources officials say it is a good start to the season, the state’s Farm Bureau noted today on its web site. “However, they add this does not mean the drought has ended,” the report emphasized. “The overall snowpack for the Sierra is 95% of average for this date. That compares favorably to the 17% of average last year at this time. The Pacific Ocean El Nino current gives hope to farmers and urban dwellers alike for above-average precipitation, at least in the Central and Southern Sierra.”

A reduced snowpack going into the 2009 crop season meant severe limitations on water allotments in parts of the San Joaquin Valley, which makes up the southern half of the Central Valley and accounts for nearly all of the state’s cotton production area.

Growers and their crop advisors indicate that they will significantly increase cotton acreage in 2010, providing water is available again. Their projections are based on a strong price for Pima cotton and a falloff in other commodity prices, especially for tomatoes and dairy feed.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Owen Taylor Up Early: Asian Oil Demand, Onions For Energy, Remote Moisture Monitoring


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By Owen Taylor, Editor

December 14, 2009 – Worth noting this morning:

Asian Oil Demand: The federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasted in a report last week that Asian countries will increase their short-term demand for oil. The heightened demand will be fueled mainly by a turnaround in industrial production. The upswing, EIA noted in a report last week, will be led by “countries such as China and India. Oil demand in 2010 should grow on average around 0.5 million bbl/d (barrels per day), rising to 25.5 million bbl/d for the region.

Georgia Gasifying Onions For Fuel: Georgia researchers are finding a use for spoiled Vidalia onions: turning them into methane gas for fuel. That fact was included in a University of Georgia report that gave consumers a string of Vidalia facts.

Why turn them into energy?

“They (unmarketable and spoiled onions) can pollute soil and pollute the water,” says UGA biological and agricultural engineer Changying “Charlie” Li. “And, for neighborhoods, the smell is a social issue. How to manage this waste stream is very critical.”

Diseased onions put back on fields can lead to more diseases.

Gary Hawkins, a CAES pollution prevention and alternative energy specialist, is working to turn unwanted onions into fuel, specifically methane gas. To do so, he shuts them in containers called anaerobic digesters, which are void of oxygen and contain bacteria. The digesting onions produce methane gas that can be used to heat buildings or to run electricity-producing generators. Based on chemical tests, onions are second only to blueberries in their potential to produce the most methane, Hawkins said.

Water Watching Remotely: We’ve just returned from the California almond conference where much of the emphasis was on how to produce almonds and other crops in 2010 with the looming potential for another year of restricted water supplies. So, a press release about a new wireless mesh moisture monitoring system caught my attention. The ClimateMinder system was initially developed to assist drought-stricken farmers in Turkey and has since been deployed in 60 farming and greenhouse operations worldwide.

According to the release, it consists of 3 technologies: GrowFlex, a patent-pending seamless hardware and software integration for 24/7 monitoring and control; GrowMobile, a unique mobile handset application; and ClimateMinder Server a secure server that provides management and connectivity. The system is managed through a “cloud-based” computing system, meaning that all the software and data functions are managed through a service.

Peanuts: Argentine Planting Off To Reasonable Start, Export Report Includes U.S.-Bound Tonnage 

About 5% of the anticipated 2009-10 Argentine peanut crop still has not been planted due to dry conditions. Although the area under these conditions is not highly significant, this continues to be a very worrying situation because of the lateness of the planting period at this point.

Fields planted early (in October) look good, with appropriate stands. The fields planted during November germinated well, without having significant emergence problems, so far. Wind damage was reported in some fields, leading to replanting in some cases.

Argentine HPS peanut kernel exports reached 350,000 tons in the January-October period. That number does not include the shipments of peanutbutter, peanut oil, peanut flours and pellets.

The main destination was Holland at 142,000 tons, followed by England with 32,000, Russia at 30,000, Algeria with 27,500, Poland with 14,000 and France importing 13,000.

The rest is distributed in other 60 countries, including 5,500 tons of "peanut of Cordoba" shipped to the United States.

FMC introduces Broadhead rice herbicide


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From a press release

FMC Corporation announced the introduction of Broadhead rice herbicide last week at the 2010 Rice Outlook Meeting in New Orleans. This new herbicide offers the flexibility and convenience rice producers need to control even the toughest grasses and broadleaves.

For use on both conventional and Clearfield rice varieties, Broadhead improves yield and rice quality by providing fast knockdown of barnyardgrass, panicum, broadleaf signalgrass, hemp sesbania and morningglory, among others. Additionally, the dual-action formula of Broadhead controls weeds that quinclorac or tank mixes cannot.

When used on conventional rice, Broadhead can be applied alone or tank mixed as an early post treatment, following a full rate of Command® 3ME herbicide applied pre or at-plant, providing growers with an effective, economical early-season weed control program.

If used on Clearfield rice, Broadhead herbicide can be tank mixed with Newpath® herbicide, following a full rate, pre-plant application of Command 3ME, improving results by controlling weeds such as hemp sesbania that may escape Newpath when used alone.

Application rates may vary based on the size of the weeds, with small actively growing weeds less than two inches tall requiring between 4.0 and 12.0 oz/A. For larger actively growing weeds (3-4 inches tall), Broadhead should be applied at rates between 8.0 and 12.0 oz/A. For optimum weed control, add COC at 0.5 to 1.0% v/v (2-4 qt. per 100 gal. spray solution).

"Broadhead provides excellent control of difficult-to-manage grasses such as barnyardgrass, broadleaf signalgrass, and crabgrass, plus a wide variety of tough broadleaf weeds," says Stu Throop, Broadhead product manager. "Broadhead combines two unique chemistries and modes of action to control grasses and weeds that other herbicides miss, making it an extremely effective way to manage resistant weeds and improve overall yield and crop quality."

Studies conducted by weed scientists at the University of Arkansas found that Broadhead provided equal or superior control of key weeds such as hemp sesbania, morningglory, Northern joint vetch and smartweed when compared to competitive herbicides.

Mississippi Row Crops Short Course Programs Now On Line

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By Owen Taylor, AgFax Editor

In case you missed it, last week’s Mississippi Row Crops Short Course is available on line in a series of video presentations. The links below will take you to individual presentations covering cotton, rice, soybeans and corn. Topics include insect control, fertility, disease prevention and weed control, including a big dose of current information on Roundup resistance.

The programs include a small video screen showing the person making the presentation and a larger screen that flips through the PowerPoint images that support the talk.

The audio is a bit distant, recorded through the video camera that captured the presenter. But the sound is good enough that you can follow along pretty easily. In at least one case, the video shows an empty podium for a couple of minutes before that specific presentation started.

That niggly point aside, these presentations are a cost-effective way to make this excellent short course available to a wider audience. There’s no substitute for attending, yourself, but so many meetings get jammed into the late fall and early winter that conflicts occur.

This is the first short course MSU has put together that covers major field crops, and it replaces the long-running and well regarded Cotton Short Course.

The programs are available in the Microsoft Silverlight format, which enables this simultaneous viewing of video and PowerPoint data. While the Row Crop Short Course home page advises that the presentations should be viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer, we can no trouble running them in FireFox 3.0. However, we could not run the presentations in Opera 9.2.

Here are the links: