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Dinosaur Politicians

Last season we lost hundreds of feet of crops to overbearing heat and drought

By Mike Jopek

The blossoms on our cherry, pear, plum and apple trees are amazingly bountiful. It looks like a bumper fruit crop this year, but who knows. The bees are sure active this springtime. Yet farming weather has been anything but predictable.

With a warmer winter and spring we’ve tended to plenty of farm chores earlier this season. Plenty of crops are already planted in the ground awaiting rain. My hands are cracked and dry ahead of most seasons.

Over the decades of growing food, we’ve transitioned to include more technology like drip irrigation, planters paper and hoop houses. Protecting a small farm from chaotic weather is no easy task and the sheer amount of challenges are overwhelming at times.

Guarding tender crops like lettuce from damaging hail or blazing sunshine is nearly impossible without technology like shade cloth or row cover. Hopefully the next federal Farm Bill focuses as much on small farm technology needs as it does for big agribusiness.

Meanwhile, May hopefully brings fresh rainstorms with no hail. Last year the forests were so dry that some of the summer outdoor time was choked out by wildfire smoke. Most everyone wants to avoid that blazing haze this summer.

Last season we lost hundreds of feet of crops like Napa cabbage to overbearing heat and drought, while kale aphids devoured plants like I’ve never seen prior. It was a challengingly heated season, one that many producers do not want to repeat.

Nationally the five-year Olympic average cost of federal crop insurance has increased dramatically for taxpayers. The cost to our government ballooned to $8.6 billion in 2014, up from $3.3 billion the decade prior. Big weather events caused significant growth in commodity and livestock damage programs.

President Barack Obama’s 2017 budget proposal includes $18 billion worth of savings over the decade for safety net programs, but Congress has yet to act on whether insurance companies or farmers should incur the brunt of these reforms.

The Feds recently allocated $48 million to help relocate an entire community in Louisiana besieged by the effects of climate change. The citizens on the Isle de Jean Charles will become our nations’ first climate refugees.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development granted $1 billion to 13 states coping with challenges to our weather. Aging levees, dams and drainage systems all need improvements to cope with a new magnitude of Mother Nature.

Predictions indicate that over the next several decades between 50 and 200 million people across the globe will be displaced from their homes as a changing climate threatens our freshwater supplies while floods, storms and drought grow significantly harsher.

Yet whether the news is from local farmers or people across the planet, hardheads in Congress continue to deny that anything is occurring to our earth while 7 billion people burn fossil fuels.

Sadly for many people across the nation, the climate will have to get a lot worse before a Republican-controlled Congress does anything more than allocate billions of taxpayer dollars toward disaster recovery.

There are many solutions available to Congress, some within reach. But small local farmers like myself aren’t holding our breaths waiting for action.

Farmers, like the citizens resettling in Louisiana, are on the forefront of weather. On our farm we spend nearly every day outdoors on chores like working row, harvesting bunches, or watering seedlings.

It’s convenient to sit in an air-conditioned office retorting that nothing is changing outdoors. Yet spend a growing season in the blazing sun or drenching rain to quickly appreciate the shear power of our climate.

Dinosaur politicians who insist that nothing is happening should consider retirement. Their service has earned pensions and I speculate Louisiana has some decent deals on beachfront property.