Showing posts with label corn crop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corn crop. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Dry around here. Real dry.


How dry is it around these parts?

Drier than a Baptist wedding reception, that's how dry. In fact, there's never been a drier July in Omaha.

Is it just me, or have there been a lot of fill-in-the-blank-ever meteorological moments lately? What we could use is a little melting ice sheet to water the parched and cracked earth of the Plains and Midwest.

Then again, climate change rarely does you any favors. As we hear from KETV television in Omaha:
For many farmers, this means giving up on the corn crop.

"The corn has basically stopped," farmer John McNamara said.

McNamara said he's been regularly watering his farm in Plattsmouth, but that it doesn't compare to a good rainfall; McNamara has lost 30 to 40 percent of his annual average production.

"You go to one plant, you have nothing. You go to another, you have nothing, this is happening a lot," McNamara said.
SUCKS, this does. Coastal Americans might be about to get a harsh economic lesson in the importance of "flyover country."

Word to the wise: Buy yourself a big freezer and stock up on beef now, when it's cheap because ranchers are having to sell off the herds they no longer can afford to feed because their pastures dried up and turned to dirt. Thus, the market is glutted.

Next year, however. . . .

Monday, June 16, 2008

Got corn? Uhhhhhhh . . . no.


America, allow us to introduce ourselves. We're the Midwest.

OF COURSE, you probably know us better as Flyover Country, home of rubes, hicks, yokels and rustics. I think you like to bandy around the quasi-slur "corn-fed."

You ought to know us better as The People Who Feed Your Condescending Selves. And here's a news flash for you: What with all the terrible weather and flooding and everything else we've been having all across America's Breadbasket . . . there ain't no corn.

Crop yields are going to be down. Way down. And that's assuming the corn crop can finish being planted -- or, in many cases, replanted -- in time for a timely harvest.

Soybeans? Who knows?

BUT THERE'S NO REASON for you to panic over our recent misfortune. Unless you use corn meal, eat corn flakes, cook with corn oil, like tortilla chips (or tortillas), drink bourbon whiskey or white lightnin', drink milk, eat beef, eat pork, feed your pets, consume any number of processed foods or put ethanol-blend gasoline into your vehicles, you should be just fine.

Otherwise, you're screwed.

Nighty-night, America. It's late . . . time for us hayseeds to pitch some of the rubble of our tornado-damaged dwellings out of the way so we can grab some shuteye on our soggy matresses.

Come winter, perhaps you might give us a thought one chilly morn, as you sit down at the kitchen table for a hearty bowl of . . . nothing.