The US drought

After The Drought Of 2012, The ‘Spring Freezing’ Of 2013 Is Ruining Crops Again

Business Insider,

27 March, 2013

The drought of 2012 devastated farms across America. By one count, it was the second most expensive “weather event” ever.

Now we have the “spring freezing,” which has seen much of the U.S. flirting with record-low temperatures.

While Midwestern states will probably emerge unscathed, early crop plantings in the southern U.S. are already getting wiped out. Florida sweet corn growers have already lost as much as 45 per cent of their early production, according to Greenbook.

Oklahoma growers are also getting hit, Mark Hodges, the executive director of Plains Grains Inc. told Bloomberg’s Tony Dreibus:

“We didn’t have that many tillers to start with,” Hodges said. “We didn’t come into the spring with the crop we would’ve liked, and we didn’t have the root system we wanted to have. We needed every tiller we could get, and I suspect several areas lost some. I’m not suggesting we lost the entire crop, but we did lose some.”

Allen Meissner, a farmer in Central Texas, Tweeted this photo of his frozen corn field:

Meissner told us “100 per cent” of his early crops were going to be wiped out.

For what it’s worth, NOAA just forecast weather should return to normal by June.