“I haven’t seen anything like this”: U.S. Wheat Farmer Woes, Decimated Corn Crops, no Feed for Livestock — What Will We Eat?
By Cap Allon
Wavy jet streams are throwing farmers something of a curve ball in 2021, as global temperatures continue to fall in line with the ever-intensifying Grand Solar Minimum (GSM)… Prepare.
U.S. Wheat Farmer Woes
Short stalks, thin rows and small bushels; Washington wheat growers are harvesting a mess this year.
“I haven’t seen anything like this,” said fourth generation farmer Kevin Klein, who grows in Sprague.
And whether you talk to a farmer, wheat breeder or economist, they’ve got one message about Washington’s 2021 wheat harvest: “Generally speaking,” said Glen Squires, CEO of the Washington Grain Commission; “for the winter wheat and spring wheat, yields are just down.”
Widget not in any sidebars
Squires said average winter wheat yields last year were about 76 bushels per acre (with one bushel equaling about 60 pounds of wheat); this year, however, current projections show 55 bushels per acre, with that number expected to drop even further.
“The spring crop is really going to hurt this year,” said Klein, but at least he has something to harvest.
“There are some people that are not even harvesting,” added Squires. “They see two to three bushels and they just stop.”
“There’s no moisture left in the soil; we sucked out and it’s all gone,” said Arron Carter, a winter wheat breeder at Washington State University regarding the next wheat planting season.
“Even if we get normal rain in the fall and winter, we’re going into the driest soil we’ve ever had,” he added
Farmers will likely have to wait longer to plant if significant rain doesn’t arrive soon. And in addition to than less time to grow, delayed planting can mean that the wheat is too short to survive the winter.
Kevin Klein asked around the old-time farmers in the state, to see if there’s ever been a year like this one.
“I listen to the older farmers and they said 1977 is the last year it’s been like this.”
There are many comparison between 2021 and 1977.
Solar activity is the main driver of weather and climate on our planet.
It always has been, and it always will be.
This is why EVERY religion tells of the EXACT same story: a story of the sun.
For more than 400 years now, an accurate sunspot record has been kept.
This record allows us to draw tentative patterns between the Sun’s output and weather on Earth.
The Pacific Northwest’s hot and dry summer of 2021 has growers and meteorologists alike comparing it to the summers of the mid/late 1970s, and the below chart offers an explanation:
Basically, the sun runs on 11-year cycles, with a solar maximum and a solar minimum within each cycle.
Looking at the chart above, we note that the year 1977 falls directly off the back of Solar Cycle 20 –a weak cycle of relatively low output– AND within a solar minimum. Forwarding to 2021, we see ourselves landing off the back of Solar Cycle 24 –the weakest cycle of the modern era– AND within another solar minimum –the deepest minimum of the past 100+ years.
Solar cycles 21, 22 and 23 resulted in the peak of the Modern Maximum: the consistently warm and predictable weather patterns this spell delivered brought-about the mass adoption of ‘monocropping’; however, with the climate now changing –in line with drastically reducing solar activity– these predictable days are over.
Some solar physicists see solar cycle 24 as the start of the next Grand Solar Minimum: a prolonged period of reduced solar output that sees the jet stream revert from its usual straight ZONAL flows to a weak and wavy MERIDIONAL one.
The impact this has on the ground is violent ‘swings between extremes’: intense bursts of heat will linger in one area, while a teeth-chattering chill will dominate nearby, and then the regions will ‘switch’ — it is this chopping and changing that will hasten the failure of our modern food production systems — crops will fail, on a large scale, and famine will ensue:
Following the West’s extreme summer of 1977 came a string of brutal winters.
North America, as a whole, recorded one of its worst winters ever in 1978 — it’s no coincidence that this came off the back of a weak solar cycle, and during a deep solar minimum.
As I’ve been warning for years, extremes will become the new normal as we move on from the Modern Maximum (21, 22 and 23) and plunge deeper and deeper into the next Grand Solar Minimum.
The poor wheat crop extends further than just Washington.
An annual U.S. crop tour on Thursday projected the average spring wheat yield in North Dakota –the top-producing state– at just 29.1 bushels per acre — this is the lowest in the history of tour records, which extend back to 1993.
The International Grains Council AGAIN cut its 2021/22 world wheat crop outlook this week, by another million tonnes to 788 million — but like the USDA, the Council’s job is to stabilize markets; they’re outlook ALWAYS leans on the optimistic side.
Expect further drops as the season progresses.
Also, look out for the USDA’s weekly crop condition ratings due today (Monday, Aug 2), and also those private estimates of U.S. corn and soy yields ahead of the USDA’s big August 12 crop supply/demand report.
2021’s wheat woes come off the back of a terrible 2019 growing season –particularly in the Midwest– as well as a disastrous 2020, during which sank U.S. wheat production to its lowest levels since USDA records began, back in 1919.
Likewise in China, the biblical flooding seen in Henan province –which accounts for 10% of China’s grains production– has destroyed the region’s wheat fields, its infrastructure, and thousands of its large hog farms.
Decimated Corn Crops
The worst frosts since at least 1994 (solar minimum of cycle 22) are decimating South America’s second corn crop, and also its coffee crop–of which Brazil is the world’s largest exporter.
The extremely rare frost covering parts of Brazil has surprised residents, with some in their sixties seeing snow for the very first time — not since the mid-1950s has the snow been this severe and widespread (not since the solar minimum of cycle 18).
Snow falling tonight in 13 cities in Brazil, crazy weather pic.twitter.com/cQXlIZrXmD
— Marcelo Teixeira (@tx_marcelo) July 29, 2021
The problems besetting the world’s largest producer and exporter of coffee have already been felt in New York, where coffee prices soared to above $2 per pound for the first time since 2014, with the climb expected to continue.
“It was worse than I imagined … It’s hard to see a field that hasn’t suffered any damage,” said agronomist Adriano de Rezende, technical coordinator at the Minasul coffee cooperative, on visiting coffee growing regions across Brazil.
Rezende said it’s too early to estimate production losses precisely, as yet more frosts are expected.
Failures of sugarcane and citrus crops are also ravaging South American economies.
Corn, as mentioned above, is also being decimated; so much so in fact, that Brazil has gone from exporter to importer.
Production numbers for Brazilian corn have continued to be slashed every time a new forecast is released — many agencies are coming in with well-under 90 million metric tons (mmt) of total corn production, down 20+% year on year.
The story is similar across Argentina, and, likewise, the corn belts of the U.S. are struggling, too.
The U.S., Argentina and Brazil are the world’s top three corn exporters — issues here have ramifications across the planet.
Ukraine is fourth, and despite what was on track to be a bumper harvest, adverse weather conditions during the first half of July threaten to take the gloss off crop quality and final yields.
Additionally, further bouts of potentially record breaking cold are forecast across much of Europe, including western Ukraine, during the first week of August:
Note also that France and Germany –Europe’s top wheat exporters, along with the Ukraine– are also copping anomalous cold AND record flooding.
These ever-mounting failure of harvests are impacting global food prices:
Shortages come next–and this is already been felt across livestock feed markets.
We’re being told that there simply isn’t enough grain for humans AND the animals, ‘they’ are pitting us against the livestock; and as a result, herds and flocks are being thinned or sold off altogether at an alarming rate, across the board. Our future is looking more and more like a meat-free one (unless you fancy chowing down on Bill Gates’ lab-grown monstrosities).
But the crops are failing anyhow, as documented above — and even if a large percentage of livestock was wiped off the planet, we would still struggle to feed ourselves given this year’s figures and estimates (also unmentioned is the fact that the animals usually receive the ‘poor’ harvests deemed unfit for human consumption — what happens to those yields if there are no animals?).
The overarching question here, with the Grand Solar Minimum only forecast to intensify as the years roll on, is what will we eat?
The answer is a simple one to understand, but a tricky one to master: grow your own!
You need to end your dependence on ‘the system’ — relying on government handouts and rationing as the supermarket shelves run dry is not a great spot to be in. Any external body in control your family’s food security is in control of you, they have you in the palm of their hands, and, in order to eat, you will buckle to any demand they choose to enforce.
You may, for example, be adamant that you’ll never take the vaccine, but what if you haven’t eaten for days and obtaining a supermarket ration card and/or being allowed entry to the shop is only available for the ‘jabbed’? You’ll have no choice but to comply.
Regain your food security from a failing and ever-desperate system.
History shows us that when food production fails, empires crumble — these past few years could be seen as the elites putting control mechanisms in place so as to avoid losing their totalitarian grip when the silos run empty: lockdowns, food rationing, queuing outside supermarkets; these have been the realities of the past 18 months, and it isn’t all that far-fetched to view these measures as a form of ‘social readying’–as preparations for the future as tighter and tighter restrictions are placed on the global food supply.
New Sunspot
Breaking a surprise string of 5 spotless days, a new sunspot is forming in the sun’s southern hemisphere:
