When people think about droughts they think about the short term effects that are playing roles on the economy, however, many people don’t think of the long term affects that droughts can have on the economy. Droughts are dangerous, they don’t only affect one area or thing but can disable or damage an entire food chain, which in the end can cause serious problems for people all over the U.S. over an extended amount of time. The focal point of this paper will be about the drought of 2012 and how it affected the U.S. agriculture including crops, livestock, and even food prices later on down the road.
Droughts, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center, originate from a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time, usually a season or more, resulting in a water shortage for some activity, group, or environmental sector (N.D.M.C, 2014). However, droughts differ depending on location and geography of the land, for example, living in California and having a dry summer wouldn’t be considered a drought because that is expected for that certain area. As we can see, droughts can be hard to define or diagnose for the reason of location because there are many factors that play a role on considering if it is a drought or not.
Droughts will creep in on an environment and people will not realize they are in a drought until they are right smack in the middle of it. According to the National Drought Mitigation Center, droughts are caused immediately from the predominant sinking motion of air (subsidence) that results in compressional warming or high pressure, which inhibits cloud formation and results in lower relative humidity and less precipitation (N.D.M.C, 2014). Unfortunately, scientist cannot predict droughts any m...
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References
Botelho, G. CNN U.S. (2012). From dry rivers to dead deer, drought's impact felt everywhere. Received from http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/15/us/drought-impact/
Crutchfield, S. United States Department of Agriculture. (2013). U.S. Drought 2012: Farm and Food Impacts. Received from http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/in-the-news/us-drought-2012-farm-and-food-impacts.aspx
National Drought Mitigation Center. (2014). Predicting Drought. Received from http://drought.unl.edu/DroughtBasics/PredictingDrought.aspx
Rayburn, E. West Virginia University Extension Service. (2005). Drought Management Before, During, and After the Drought. Received from http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/forglvst/DroughtManagementBeforeandAfter.pdf
Smith, A. CNN Money. (2012). Get Ready to Pay More for Your Steak. Received from http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/30/pf/food-prices-drought/index.htm?iid=EL
Already scientists have observed that more than 75% of the recent economic losses are caused by natural hazards which can be attributed to wind storms, floods, droughts and other climate related hazards. In the year 2008, the U.S. state of Iowa was on the front pages of newspapers all around the world. Weeks of heavy rain in the Midwest caused rivers to swell and levees to break. Millions of acres of farmland are now underwater, their plantings most likely destroyed. By March, Iowa had tied its third-highest monthly snowfall in 121 years of record keeping, and then came the rain. April’s st...
Spross, Jeff. "The Impact Of Climate Change On The Midwest: More Heat, More Droughts, More Floods, Fewer Crops." ThinkProgress RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2014. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/05/07/3434933/national-climate-assessment-midwest/
The California water drought has been declared a crisis by the governor of California. 2013 was the driest year on record, and California could be running out of water. Californians should be water wise, and their use, or no use, of water will have an enormous impact on this drought. They can use the techniques published in a recent Time article called, 5 Ways to Bust California’s Drought, to reduce their water use. Landscape techniques, alternate water sources, and the personal conservation of water can reduce the use of water, and can have a positive change on this water crisis.
The drought along with the dust storms as stated already made it impossible to plant crops, it also made it very difficult to provide food for the farmers and their families. If you could not plant anything, you did not have food for animals and you did not have food for families or children that needed it desperately. There was a sudden urgency of concern once farmers could not feed their family and members of those families started to starve.
Droughts in Wyoming’s future are unpredictable and uncertain; however, Richard Guldin of the Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station in Fort Collins, Colorado, has made some predictions for the water situati...
Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that there was very little preparation and planning the farmers could do before having to abandon their homes.
Hembreee, Brandon. "Southwest Could See Continuation of Drought." Southwest Farm Press 40.3 17 January 2013: 1-7. Web.
On the heart (center) of California is a flat area with miles and miles of farms and up to 230 different crops. The central valley agriculture is essential to the United States; it not only delivers almost half of the produce but also helps the economy by also giving more job opportunities (California Department of food and agriculture, 2014). Many families depend on the central valley agriculture to survive economically in the United States. It is a well-known fact that rain and snows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains are a very important element in the central valley. No rain in the central valley can cause many devastating issues to occur quickly. Recently in the year of 2013 California received less rainfall than years before. The small amount of water the central valley is receiving is harming not only to the land but humans and animals as well. It’s destroying the habitats of animals with forest fires caused from the dry spells occurring. The central valley is going through a drought, so much that around this time of year the central valley usually accumulates enough rain for the necessities in the valley, agriculture for example. This year, however, has been different, the central valley hasn’t received enough water and this has caused a drought in the valley. Water is an important element in this world for not only human life, but for the environment in general, a shortage of water supply can bring issues to the environment and those living in it. The central valley holds the largest percent of class one soil, not only that, the valley grows a third of all the produce being grown in the United States, that’s more than 230 crops that are being grown in the central valley. However, this drought isn’t only affecting the resident...
Americans today tend to believe that the Colorado River drought has been a recent occurrence, although drought relief strategies have been implemented since early 1997. To summarize, in the book The Colorado River Basin Drought Planning and Organizations, Colorado is named as the original state to acquire a drought relief plan. For instance, various assume water levels are diminutive in the Colorado and blame is due to the previous ten years of drought throughout the United States. Although it is true that water levels are at a record low, initial plans in the early 1920’s to introduce manufactured structures into the water basin is the original reason Colorado’s water system began to be compromised. It follows, then the supplementary natural
Water shortage in arid and semi-arid regions and declining its availability to a crisis ...
Zara Beadle METR 113 16 December 2015 Final paper California Drought The California drought has been extremely harmful to the states’ air quality. Since 2012, California has seen the worst drought conditions in 1,200 years and it is severely affecting air quality (California’s drought, 2015). As of 2015, the cities of Hanford, Merced, Modesto, Fresno, Yuba City, Lancaster-Palmdale, Chico, Sacramento, and Bakersfield have experienced exceptional drought coverage (Pestano, 2015).
... middle of paper ... ... Retrieved May 22, 2014 from http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/toxic-waste-overview/ Onishi, N. & Wollan, M. (2014, January 17). Severe drought grows worse in California. The New York Times.
(2009). The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Drought - a fact sheet. Retrieved from: http://www.ifad.org/lrkm/factsheet/cc.pdf The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, (2007).
Climate change is currently affecting agriculture because it is causing prolonged droughts, violent flooding, sea level to rise, and also health related issues. Droughts and flooding utterly affect agriculture because it damages cultivation since the amount of water applied to crops and farming is fundamental to the...
Global warming is one of the main causes, which leads to the lack of water and drought. A drought-like condition exists in most of India’s part. Government of India states that 68% of the country is disposed to the drought, which (consequences are) leads to massive migration of people to more favorable places, famine, conflicts among inhabitants. India is known in the world as one of the biggest producers of water-intensive crops such as rice, sugarcane and wheat. According to a survey done by Grail Research, approximately 82% of total water is used for agricultural consumption and 90% of it is employed for irrigation of rice, wheat and sugarcane (Grail Research, LLC, 2009). There are several solutions which could lead to the decr...