Word: droughts
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...Changing Drought...
...ready for a dry summer. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, half the continental U.S. is currently experiencing abnormal dryness or drought. Over the past four years, migrating drought patterns have spread toward the Eastern shores, crippling crops, shrinking lakes and drying up wells this month in eight Southern states, particularly Alabama. Meanwhile, the Northeast and much of the Midwest have been spared...
...costs, they're using hardier grasses like fescue in the Pacific Northwest and paspalum in Hawaii, Florida and Majorca. These drought- tolerant varieties don't require as much water for irrigation. And designers are working with what the land has to offer--the days of creating a pine forest out of a desert, à la Steven Wynn in Las Vegas, are numbered. "I take advantage of Mother Nature," says designer John Robinson. "At Blue Heron in Medina [Ohio], I had ravine after ravine, so I positioned the course to hit over those, like a steeplechase...
...price issue is more problematic. Demand has driven corn prices from $2 per bu. to more than $4 in the past 15 months. Those prices have since fallen back to about $3.70. But if they climb again as a result, for example, of a drought that cuts the yield, then ethanol distillers, cattle feeders, hog and dairy farmers will be the first to pay the price. Shelling out more for corn would eventually translate into more expensive ethanol, as well as higher prices for beef, pork, chicken, eggs and milk--movement that the market is already seeing. Hormel Foods...
...will be anything other than a huge boon for his country. But for the poor farmers watching the oxen decline to feast at the Royal Plowing Ceremony, the promise of oil revenues must feel completely irrelevant to their hand-to-mouth lives. What will they do if a drought does indeed strike this year, and their rice shoots wilt in the tropical sun? If the sacred cows know the answer, they aren't talking...