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As many U.S. farmers anxiously await spring planting, supply chain concerns continue to plague planting outlooks. And while weather typically has the final say in what farmers plant, input availability issues could be another factor farmers battle all spring. USDA’s Prospective Plantings report shows farmers intend to plant 4% fewer acres in 2022, largely due to fertilizer prices. However, it’s chemistry availability that seems to be a growing concern for both ag retail suppliers and farmers. Commodity and input prices have seen a dramatic change since the USDA survey was done at the beginning of March. And if farmers decide...

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour. https://www.ft.com/content/51d767dd-6088-4aad-8d63-ff9179559118 We know that the war in Ukraine has led to sharp increases in prices for both food and fuel. This in turn has sparked concern that we may see a repeat of the famine and food riots that...

Wiltshire Police said today that with summer well and truly underway they have seen an increase of crop circles appearing across the county. A spokesperson said: “They might seem harmless but they actually have a huge negative impact on the hardworking landowners and farmers whose crops are damaged. Creating a crop circle is criminal damage and an offence. ... The spokesperson added: “We urge all farmers and landowners if they have has a crop circle on their land to report it to us on 101 so it can be recorded. Often after a crop circle appears, individuals will arrive with...

As competition drives prices down, even chamber-of-commerce types acknowledge that the North Coast economy is at risk. Pot kept things afloat as the logging and fishing industries declined. Restaurants, car dealerships, banks, hotels and dental clinics all depend on marijuana money...In the past,planting day was a time of great expectations, maybe for a vacation in Hawaii or Mexico during the rainy months or a new motor home to make deliveries around the country.But this year,Andrew and Anna are hoping only that their 50 or so marijuana plants will cover the bills. Since the mid-1990s,the price of outdoor-grown marijuana has...

America’s breadbasket is enduring a drought, one that stretches from Indiana clear to California and ranks among the worst in recent history. And conveniently located in the middle of it is the swing state of Iowa, where President Obama on Tuesday took the natural disaster as an opportunity to demagogue to farmers and get in his knocks against the Republican vice-presidential nominee, Representative Paul Ryan (Wis.). After announcing some $170 million in pork spending in the region (as the vice president would say: literally — the government is buying $100 million worth of swine from farmers in an effort to...

Kenya: Some Starve, Others Enjoy Bumper CropPosted by Janis Esch on September 2, 2011 11:25 AM NAIROBI, Kenya - In central and western Kenya, farmers have had a bumper crop of plump ears of corn and earthy potatoes. Yet in the north, skeletal children wait for food aid amid a growing emergency. Kenya is supposed to be East Africa's economic powerhouse but a drought has sharply highlighted the historical neglect of northern Kenya, where 3.75 million Kenyans need food aid. Many Kenyan critics are blaming the situation not just on the weather but also on corrupt and negligent politicians. **SNIP**...

A spell of unusually cold weather in northern Mexico has severely damaged the maize crop in the state of Sinaloa. Officials estimate the losses could amount to four million tonnes of corn - 16% of Mexico's annual harvest. President Felipe Calderon said everything possible must be done to re-sow the fields over the next two weeks. There are fears the losses could force up the price of the corn tortillas that most Mexicans eat with every meal. Officials say up to 600,000 hectares (1.5m acres) of maize have been lost to frost in Sinaloa, which is home to some of...

The crispness is in the air and frost has already been on the pumpkin this fall. It's harvest time in Indiana. But for farmers, this has not been a good year. A shortened planting season because of rain is now mixed with a late harvest because of rain. Some reports have the moisture content as high as 35 percent in some areas. This has posed a problem for the wheat industry in Indiana.

Changes in the sun is shortening growing season while credit crunch leaves farmers unable to purchase fertilizer at a time when world food supplies are at all time lows. Crop failures around the world are snowballing into a dangerous climax that may lead to social unrest and famine. Suggest reading entire article and links within it. Very scary... and this is happening... it is not conjecture. A mini ice age may be on the way because of sunspot cycles and already existing empty grain, coffee, et al silos.

FOSSTON, Minn. — The first reports of something amiss in the wheat fields east of here came early Sunday from barking dogs and bawling cows, but no livestock is missing — no people, either — so locals seem inclined to doubt that alien spaceships made a stop at Dean Sorgaard’s place. Still, after a UPS driver passing through the area relayed sightings of mysterious “crop circles” to Fosston Mayor Jim Offerdahl, the mayor drove out to check for himself. “I’m no expert,” Offerdahl said, trying to sound both skeptical and open-minded, “but either somebody was out having some fun or...

Government plans clampdown on vandalism after lobbying from biotech firms Genetically modified crops may be grown in hidden locations in Britain amid fears that anti-GM campaigners are winning the battle over the controversial technology, the Guardian has learned. Officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) confirmed they are looking at a range of options to clamp down on vandalism to GM crop trials, after intense lobbying by big crop biotech companies. The firms have warned that trials of GM crops are becoming too expensive to conduct in Britain because of the additional costs of protecting fields...

Impoverished Areas Of Africa And Asia Face Severe Crop Losses From Climate Change In 20 Years ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2008) — Many of the world's poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE). "The majority of the world's 1 billion poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods," said lead author David Lobell, a senior research scholar at FSE, which focuses on environmentally sustainable solutions to global hunger. "Unfortunately, agriculture is also the human enterprise...

Thousands Of Crop Varieties Depart For Arctic Seed VaultPackaging seeds. Thousands of Crop Varieties from Four Corners of the World Depart for Arctic Seed Vault. (Credit: CIMMYT, Mexico.) ScienceDaily (Jan. 26, 2008) — At the end of January, more than 200,000 crop varieties from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East—drawn from vast seed collections maintained by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR)—will be shipped to a remote island near the Arctic Circle, where they will be stored in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV), a facility capable of preserving their vitality for thousands of years. The...

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU — The fruits of the past month’s labor were reaped when the Al Rasheed Land Owners Association took a major step in becoming a self-sufficient entity, Dec. 17, providing for the welfare of the farmers. The organization was originally formed a few months ago, to help unionize local farmers and allow them to increase their harvests. During the event, 250 rolls of plastic were distributed, one per farmer. “They are totally in charge. We are just here to observe,” said Capt. Ken Guglielmina, Civil Affairs Team 11, currently attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd...

Millions face famine as crop disease rages Scientists say wheat blight that ravaged Africa is set on a course for Asia Robin McKie and Xan Rice Sunday April 22, 2007 The Observer (UK) Scientists say millions of people face starvation following an outbreak of a deadly new strain of crop disease which is spreading across the wheat fields of Africa and Asia. The disease, known as black stem rust, has already destroyed harvests in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia. Now researchers report that stem rust spores have blown across the Red Sea into the Arabian peninsula and infected wheat fields in...

ROME (AFP) - Despite projections of a bumper grain crop this year, 33 countries will not have enough food, with Iraq and Zimbabwe among the hardest hit, the UN food agency said Tuesday. Countries with "widespread lack of access to food" include Afghanistan, North Korea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Liberia, Mauritania, Nepal, Niger and Sierra Leone, according to the April issue of the Food and Agriculture Organisations "Crop Prospects and Food Situation" report. Hardest hit, with an "exceptional shortfall" in food production and supplies, are Iraq, Lesotho, the Philippines, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, the FAO said. In eastern Africa, millions "still depend...

Mummy’s amazing American maize The far-reaching influence of Spanish and Portuguese colonisers appears not to have extended to South American agriculture, scientists studying Andean mummies up to 1,400 years old have found. The University of Manchester researchers working with colleagues in Buenos Aires compared the DNA of ancient maize found in the funerary offerings of the mummy and at other sites in northwest Argentina with that grown in the same region today. Surprisingly, they found both ancient and modern samples of the crop were genetically almost identical indicating that modern European influence has not been as great as previously...

The federal government instituted crop insurance in 1938 in an attempt to end the need for ad hoc aid to farmers following disastrous droughts or floods. But ad hoc aid has not ended in the past seven decades, and the insurance program that was intended to replace it has transformed into a massive, poorly disguised crop subsidy program that provides few benefits to farmers who practice good risk management. Instead, the program rewards poor risk managers with generous subsidies at the expense of taxpayers, contrary to the fundamental principles of insurance. To be sure, lawmakers have made several efforts to...

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday. In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

Eric Julien, a former French military air traffic controller and senior airport manager, has completed a study of the comet 73P Schwassmann- Wachmann and declared that a fragment is highly likely to impact the Earth on or around May 25, 2006. Comet Schwassman-Wachmann follows a five-year orbit that crosses the solar system's ecliptic plane. It has followed its five year orbit intact for centuries; but, in 1995, mysteriously fragmented. According to Julien, this is the same year that a crop circle appeared showing the inner solar system with the Earth missing from its orbit. He argues the "Missing Earth" crop...