Warming-Fueled Texas Drought Cost Farmers $7.6 Billion...

[ProSense]

Warming-Fueled Texas Drought Cost Farmers $7.6 Billion: ‘No One Alive Has Seen Single-Year Drought Damage To This Extent’

By Stephen Lacey

Texas Agronomists have revised estimates for the cost of Texas’ devastating drought, finding that it cost the agricultural sector $2 billion more than originally thought.

According to the Texas AgriLife Extension Service, the Texas drought has caused $7.62 billion in damages to crops and farming operations. That’s up from $5.3 billion reported last August.

Texas State Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon explained last September:

Warmer temperatures lead to greater water demand, faster evaporation, and greater drying-out of potential fuels for fire. Thus, the impacts of the drought were enhanced by global warming, much of which has been caused by man.

Nearly every single agricultural sector in the state was hammered by the record-breaking drought that began in 2010, causing a ripple effect through global commodity markets. With livestock, cotton, peanut and even pumpkin crops hit hard, shortages of product is driving prices up and putting a squeeze on farmers in the state

“When you are one of the biggest agricultural producing states in the nation, a monumental drought causes enormous losses,” Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said in a statement this week after the new damage figures were released. Other agricultural experts weighed in on the devastating impact to Texas farmers:

- more -

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/03/23/450537/warming-fueled-texas-drought-cost-farmers-76-billion-no-one-alive-has-seen-drought-damage-this-extent/

[aquart]

1. What would have happened if they'd admitted it was coming and PLANNED for it?

Just wondering.

[patrice]

2. Are you suggesting that some people think they can buy their way out of anything, hence . . .

the empowerment of certain "blindly" wealth-aggregating international financial machines that are fed our lives ir-respective of any consequences beyond profits?

[patrice]

3. Trying here to remember the very first time I encountered the words "ecology" & "ecologist" so very

long ago.

I think it was in the KC Star, in an article about a Fortune-500 consulting scientist in TEXAS. The name Browning has stuck in my head, but I'd better try to research that a bit.