The nation known for its beef and beef consumption is threatened by fast-spreading wildfires that have consumed more acreage so far than the five-year average of a typical wildfire season in California. The hard-hit Corrientes region is a mix of cattle ranches and crucial wetland eco-systems populated by the jaguar, cayman-crocodiles, and other unique wildlife.
Jonathan Gilbert Bloomberg Green writes:
Blazes are tearing through northeast Argentina, consuming more land than a typical California wildfire season and threatening a key cattle farming region of this major beef exporter.
The fires have already swept through almost 2 million acres in Argentina’s Corrientes, about 9% of a province that’s a mix of ranching and protected wetlands, with little sign of relief as temperatures soar to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). The flames are consuming 30,000 hectares each day, about twice the size of New York’s Staten Island.
The land burned in Argentina this year far exceeds California’s five-year average of 1.6 million acres and is more than three-quarters of the land lost to wildfires in the U.S. state last year.
The South American country had already been suffering from dryness, with farmers losing crops, exporters grappling with shallow rivers, and the government forced to substitute weak hydro power when scientists are warning that climate change has brought the world to a tipping point.
Meanwhile, in the United States, drought has become a major threat to winter wheat. Grain Central reports that the winter wheat crop is in the “grips of a major drought.”
PUTTING the influence of the Ukraine crisis aside, the drought situation in the United States is becoming a huge concern for global wheat supply in 2022. Much of the nation west of the Mississippi Valley is either in drought or abnormally dry, and the latest long-range weather outlook shows very little relief as the critical spring months approach.
Large swathes of the US look set to heat up with warmer-than-average temperatures forecast this spring due to the La Niña weather phenomenon. Most of the 48 contiguous states are either drought-declared or in danger of sliding into drought if there is no rainfall relief in the next few months. According to the National Drought Mitigation Centre, the current dry is the most expansive for continental US since January 2013. Drought has been in place in the western and north-western states since last summer. While it has improved in some areas, such as the Dakotas, it has now spread east into much of the Central and Southern Plains, from eastern Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas into Texas, Oklahoma and parts of the Lower Mississippi Valley.
In last week’s update for the National Integrated Drought Information System, 57 per cent of continental US was categorised as being in drought, with a further 15pc classified as abnormally dry. According to the National Centres for Environmental Information, more than 40pc of mainland US has been in the grips of drought for the past 70 weeks. Overall, 68pc of the US winter-wheat area was in drought, as was 78pc of the durum wheat area, 76pc of the barley area, and 75pc of the sorghum area.
Holy cannoli!
The temperature outlook from the desert Southwest and central Rockies to much of the Southern Plains is warmer than usual across March, April and May. The only parts of the country that are expected to be wetter than average over that period are the Ohio Valley, southern Great Lakes and parts of the north-west.
In Ohio too much moisture to plant.
Northwest Ohio can expect to be deluged with precipitation — probably more rain than snow — in the coming weeks because of the effects of the La Nina weather pattern in place through at least the end of April, Mr. Wilson said in his talk Tuesday night.
“It could linger into May,” he said.
Area farmers can, as a result, look for less-than-ideal planting conditions again this spring, the unpredictability of which will be exacerbated by more rapid freeze-thaw cycles like the one this week, Mr. Wilson said.
“I’ve been saying ‘patience’ in all of the outlooks this year,” he said. “We’re going to be closer to 2019 than 2021. By that I mean a lot wetter than average, a lot wetter than last year.”
While some parts of America — particularly the West — have become bone dry in recent years, northwest Ohio farmers have been struggling to work in unusually wet, soggy fields — conditions that, according to Mr. Wilson, are wholly consistent with climate change forecasts.
In 2019, fields were so wet across northwest Ohio and other parts of the Midwest that many farmers never planted corn and soybeans and, instead, sought federal crop-insurance payments to help cover their losses.