Id rather have a drought than a flood. Its kind of nice knowing i can plan an event outdoors and not have to worry about a thunderstorm ruining it. Rain is my arch enemy. Im fine with a drought. I could use less heat tho!
Drought
- Thread starter MNCYWX
- Start date
I would prefer flood. Our farmland is high enough that it would never flood. Which is the case for a lot of other farmers too. And severe flooding usually isn't as widespread. Plus it's usually it's a lot of water at once that runs off (think the flood event in Dubuque last year). Within a few weeks, you can be back to normal.
There's no hiding from a drought.
There's no hiding from a drought.
I would never pick a flood. 08 flood ruined my golf course. 2010 flood ruined my golf course and my house. Walking through chest high water in your house not a fun experience. This drought sucks but flood water is far far worse.
I'm looking at it from an agricultural perspective. Doesn't really affect my life if a golf course is destroyed.
With the corn crop, the heat has done a couple of other things to affect yield.
1) silking stage. The silks are something like 95% water. With out enough moisture the silks do not extend out of the tip of the husks as the husks stay wrapped tighter and kernels don't get pollinated that leads into the next item...
2) Pollen- The high temps kill the pollen, so getting all the potential kernels to fill out if they do not get fertilized, is drastically reduced.
Looking through a windshield at a field of corn most people would say... It looks good from here... not the case this year!
1) silking stage. The silks are something like 95% water. With out enough moisture the silks do not extend out of the tip of the husks as the husks stay wrapped tighter and kernels don't get pollinated that leads into the next item...
2) Pollen- The high temps kill the pollen, so getting all the potential kernels to fill out if they do not get fertilized, is drastically reduced.
Looking through a windshield at a field of corn most people would say... It looks good from here... not the case this year!
From an ag perspective here outside of Akron Iowa, I absolutely hate flooding as any farmer along highway 12 will experience wide spread flooding as it's along the Big Sioux River basin. Many farmers are in the hills, but almost half of our land gets flooded every spring regardless of how much rain or snow there's been (Sioux Falls kind of screws us in that aspect.) It's not just us either. Anybody who has taken highway 12 north of Sioux City can tell you, there are literally no places along the river that doesn't have farmland.
That being said, I'm not sure which I'd rather have. I'm used to watching it flood every spring (and many times fall also). I guess we'll find out which is worse this fall.
I'd rather have neither
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That being said, I'm not sure which I'd rather have. I'm used to watching it flood every spring (and many times fall also). I guess we'll find out which is worse this fall.
I'd rather have neither
.My point was were I lived was flooded, work I can deal with. If you have never experienced that you can't comment on it.
if you've never watched your family's livelihood roast in the fields, you probably can't comment on that either.
My point was that a flood is generally more localized, so it affects fewer people and has a lesser impact on the economy. Not that what those who are affected experience isn't bad.
So to the farmers out there, even if we do start to get rain will it make a difference? If the corn has not pollenated by now can it catch up and still produce any meaningful harvest? Same with soybeans?
My cousin had his house flooded up to the first floor (basement full and lost a lot of possessions)by Irene last year, so I guess that means I know what it's like to get flooded too.
I'm not trying to fight with you, I'm just crazy frustrated that my brother just started running a farm this year that he took over at a dying neighbor's request, took out a loan to get started, and now may have nothing at the end of the year. I'm mad because my parent's crops are dying in the field. And I'm mad because every goddamn time it gets close to raining, it skips right over their county. They saw the freaking lightning and could feel the outflow of a storm last week and they got nothing. And so many of my friends and other family are in the same situation.
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I'm not an agronomist (and I know some are here, so please correct me) but I think the corn crop is pretty much done for. Early corn has already pollinated, and late corn hasn't gotten any rain at all.
I think soybeans still have a shot, but they need rain soon too.
I did hear oats are doing very well (at least what my parents have) and rain would help the hay/pastures come back.
I don't mean a fight. This drought has hurt everyone and it pisses me off as well. My wife will tell you I have been rather grumpy.
We know the feeling here in Plymouth county. Seems like everything just hops right around us or builds up immediately after it passes. It's an incredibly widespread issue, and as bad as this sounds for the consumer, the farmer can luck out (a little..) if corn continues to rise due to lack of supply. It's already sitting around 8.
My brother is a commodities broker and recommends buying and selling to my father, so we've had the corn ready in a couple semis hoping for the price to rise and jump on the chance when it comes..
I think one of the worst things was (here in Madison-ish), we got rain for the first time all summer last week. Something like two inches in an hour. So of course it all just ran off because the ground is so hard. Had major street flooding, but did little to nothing for the fields.
It's raining all around us -- we got nothing. You learn over the years to not fret the weather. There is nothing you can do about it. Concentrate on those things you can control.
D
DistrictCyclone
Guest
One of the big pork processors (Smithfield) announced today that they'd have to import corn from Brazil because the crop in the U.S. is pretty much toast.
It's just hard to imagine a flood right now, you know? And our milk cow pasture has actually been flooded a couple times. One time a few days before our organic inspection, we got 5 inches overnight and it washed down all the used tires that our neighbor's son dumped in his CRP land.
Spent the hottest, muggiest day of the summer cleaning like 300 tires out of a pasture and timber. Two months later we got 13 inches, but everything was still pretty cleaned out from the last one, so that time we just had to redo all the floodgates. Again.
So I agree that floods suck too. Just hard to imagine a lot of water being a bad thing right now.
How are you measuring impact? If you are talking about what will have a greater impact on an individual or a community, then floods are probably worse. If your talking about impact to an economy, especially on a larger scale, then drought is probably worse. The whole country will be feeling the affects of this drought, and it is possible it could continue for years and have a big impact on food prices. I don't think either is "worse" than the other.
