Improved agricultural practices and widespread irrigation may stave off another agricultural calamity in the Great Plains. But scientists are now warning that two inescapable realities rising temperatures and worsening drought could still spawn a modern-day Dust Bowl.
As the Climate Warms, Could the U.S. Face Another Dust Bowl?
Improved agricultural practices and widespread irrigation may stave off another agricultural calamity in the Great Plains. But scientists are now warning that two inescapable realities rising temperatures and worsening drought could still spawn a modern-day Dust Bowl.
Growing up in rural Iowa in the 1990s, Isaac Larsen remembers a unique herald of springtime. The snowbanks piled along roads, once white or gray, would turn black. The culprit was windblown dust, stirred from barren farm fields into the air.
Even as some of the region’s farmers have adopted more sustainable practices, the dust still flies. Not long ago, Larsen’s mother told her son about an encounter with a dust storm, saying “the soil was just blowing across the road almost like a blizzard, but black.”
The Big Thaw: How Russia Could Dominate a Warming World ProPublica 12/16/2020 by Abrahm Lustgarten, photography by Sergey Ponomarev
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This article, the third in a series on global migration caused by climate change, is a result of a partnership between ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, with support from the Pulitzer Center.
IT WAS ONLY November, but the chill already cut to the bone in the small village of Dimitrovo, which sits just 35 miles north of the Chinese border in a remote part of eastern Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region. Behind a row of sagging cabins and decades-old farm equipment, flat fields ran into the brambly branches of a leafless forest before fading into the oblivion of a dreary squall. Several villagers walked the single-lane dirt road, their shoulders rounded against the cold, their ghostly
Daniel Imhoff: Make the Corn Belt a carbon belt
Summary: Establishing a carbon belt across the U.S. heartland is as essential as the moon landing was 60 years ago. We still have just one planet. Ensuring its long-term habitability is arguably the greatest challenge before us.
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Daniel Imhoff | ×
Neat rows of planted corn yield bushels of the crop as a harvesting machine moves through the fields of a large commercial farm near Hector, Minnesota, in a 2002 file image. Bob Fila/Chicago Tribune/TNS
In 2020, U.S. federal farm subsidies reached $46 billion, at least a three-fold increase in annual agricultural supports since President Donald Trump took office. This truly staggering level of taxpayer spending constituted nearly 40% of U.S. farm income, making agriculture a de facto public-private partnership. Some might call it socialism. Others might see it as a blatant attempt to buy votes in flyover country during an election year.
Commentary: Make the Corn Belt a carbon belt
Published: 12/13/2020 6:00:39 AM
In 2020, U.S. federal farm subsidies reached $46 billion, at least a threefold increase in annual agricultural supports since President Donald Trump took office. This truly staggering level of taxpayer spending constituted nearly 40% of U.S. farm income, making agriculture a de facto public-private partnership. Some might call it socialism. Others might see it as a blatant attempt to buy votes in flyover country during an election year.
The fact is, the billions spent on the farm sector today are neither protecting the future of U.S. agriculture nor preserving the traditional family farm. But that investment could actually provide a social compact that might steer us away from climate catastrophe.