doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Kansas Drought

So what does all this "see what I know" have to do with the Kansas drought??? And KY John it's "CRP", not CPR.....Rained again last nite..

A point or two re weather (since we're discussing the drought): Yes, last year was a mild winter most places, with significantly below average snowfall. And July was the single hottest month on record across the United States. Makes you think maybe Gore was onto something . . .

But then there's this: Prior to last winter, Iowa had suffered 5 winters in a row where the snowfall was either average (30") or above. In 3 of those 5 winters, snowfall was at least 25% above normal, and in one case it was nearly 60% above normal. So isolating last winter as an indication of global warming doesn't resonate well with Iowans.

Likewise, and of equal importance to bird hunters, rainfall for the months of April and May was at or above the long-term average of 8" for 4 out of those 5 years. So, although Iowa has lost habitat (down from 1.9 to 1.3 million acres of CRP, 2003-11), it's weather that has really hammered bird numbers over the last several years. Snowy winter + wet spring = double whammy for a lot of upland species.

And concerning long-term trends in weather: As several have remarked, we only have reliable weather data for about 150 years. However, prior to 2005, looking at available data, Iowa had never experienced 5 winters in succession with above average snowfall. Makes one wonder about the "coming Ice Age" that was the cover headline on Time magazine back in the 70's.

As for feeding the world's population, it's not entirely a question of how much land we can put into production. If we were still getting the same crop yields today we got back in 1950, we'd be in serious trouble feeding the current population. However, where 100 bu/acre corn used to be a very good crop, 200 bu/acre is now quite common. So farmers have become a lot more efficient. But there's definitely a limit, with our rapidly expanding population.

If anybody wonders how the worlds changed over the last... billion years, check out this website http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/

All these folks say "Save the planet". Mother earth don't need saving, within a million years, comparable to a fart in human time, anything we do to the planet will be healed. The only thing is, we'll be gone.

Steve

How many realize it costs over $10 a gallon to make ethanol so we can breath cleaner air.....read bull hockey!!

If it was stopped the ranchers would'nt have to pay over $8 a bushell to feed their cattle.

We would save money on gasoline and food.

What kind of ranchers feed anything that cost 8 bucks per bushel? None of the ones I know...Ethanol is a bad idea, but it doesnt cost 10 bucks per gallon to produce...Plants are SHUTTING DOWN because of the cost of corn..

I don't know how much corn costs, but I do know it takes more energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than the gallon of ethanol contains.

Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that is kind of stupid. No government subsidies equals no ethanol and less greenhouse gas.

Ethanol was is a dumb idea....

Ethanol does not appear to be the brightest idea when corn is consistently over $5/bushel, and it's way past that now. However, when ethanol got started, corn was down in the $2-3/bu range, and farmers were happy as heck to have another market, which made their corn worth more.

The idea behind ethanol, however, was not strictly economic. It also focused on energy independence. In other words, not counting on unreliable foreign sources to keep providing us with oil. By creating an ethanol industry, we now have the capability of making at least some of the fuel on which our vehicles run, should there be a problem with the supply of oil. It is certainly not THE answer to energy independence, but it's one aspect of moving us in that direction.

The ethanol story isn't yet finished. Corn is used because it stores huge amounts of sugar in the form of sugar that converts into starch. The starch can easily be converted back to sugar and that is used in fermentation to produce ethanol.

However, substances such as cellulose are also starches (starch is a polymer of sugars) but are hard to break down to sugar so they can be fermented.

There's a lot of research (gov't sponsored) to find ways to economically hydrolyze cellulose into substituent sugars so we can get ethanol from them. I think some of the work is promising - it's not something I follow too closely but it would be truly a breakthru if we could take, for example, trash trees and brush and economically derive ethanol from them. There are some grasses (I forgot which) that already are promising.

It isn't difficult to break down cellulose to its sugars, it's just that it is not economically possible to compete with corn or with oil.

You are right it is CRP not CPR. That might explain why my CRP did not save that fellows life. By the way there is no 'h" in my Jon. My folks were too poor to buy a "h". We have had rain the last few days but it is a case of too little too late for too many I am afraid. Beans might make but corn is done here if you did not have a irrigation system.

Going to bush hog two areas and disc a third area and see if we can not shoot a few doves over the burned up corn. At least these areas are just at the extreme corner where the pivot system could not reach instead of the entire field. Might have to see if a wheat cover crop is needed to prevent soil erosion.

I did not intend to stir up a debate and regret my adding to the fire in such a dry year. Flamers are present enough without anymore gas on this site these days. They grade for spelling, grammar and punctuation. My third grade nightmare is coming back to me. Keep well.....