Author: Ed Iglehart

It's far from certain it will get that much warmer uniformly, or that
more crops will grow better. The advice to local farmers was that the
autumn (planting time not currently safe due to wet) will be longer
before the winter rains begins and severely limit access to the land -
equipment bogs down and seriously disturbs the soil structure. Winter
wet seems likely to extend further into the Spring, so early cultivation
and planting is curtailed.

I have to admit my observations locally are different, extending some 35
years (in arrears). I have noticed more frequent earlier ends to rain,
sometimes with no significant rainfall between February and late April
or even early May.

The advisors also indicated a frequent very dry period between July and
August, at times so severe as to dessicate the roots of many
shallow-rooted crops. I have observed this quite often, notably 75 and
76, but on several more summers and more frequently of late.

It's not simple, and full of uncertainty, and many large adjustments
will be needed. A certain amount of Anthropogenic (human-caused)
climate disruption is already bought in an irrevocable contract for
which our payment received was the 'benefits' of the industrial
revolution, which has nearly destroyed the work of the Neolithic
(Agrarian) revolution.

The Chinese are losing topsoil at a rate unprecedented in the forty
centuries they have farmed the same soil. "On the basis of the data
of Wolff, Kellner and Carpenter, or of Hall, the people of the
United States and of Europe are pouring into the sea, lakes or
rivers and into the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000
pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of potassium, and
777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus per million of adult
population annually, and this waste we esteem one of the great
achievements of our civilization. In the Far East, for more than
thirty centuries, these enormous wastes have been religiously saved
and today the four hundred million of adult population send back to
their fields annually 150,000 tons of phosphorus; 376,000 tons of
potassium, and 1,158,000 tons of nitrogen comprised in a gross
weight exceeding 182 million tons, gathered from every home, from
the country villages and from the great cities like
Hankow-Wuchang- Hanyang with its 1,770,000 people swarming on a land
area delimited by a radius of four miles.
F H King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, 1911
http://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/010122king/ffc9.html

Everywhere else mechanised and chemically fertilised agriculture has
been embraced has been sending topsoil to the sea at an accelerating rate.

There are hopeful posibilities as well, but we will have to change our focus from
Money, which is only a stand-in for ENERGY, to a more balanced view.
There is also the spectre of
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/pcwe
213,000 more Earth-altering Homo (self-styled) Sapiens every single day
of the year. A million and a half more of us every week.

Houb Salaam
ed