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Upfront
Expect a little white noise
According to scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a new 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity showed signs it was on its way in January when the cycle’s first sunspot appeared in the sun’s Northern Hemisphere. It will bring increased risks for power grids, airline communications, GPS signals and even cell phones and ATM transactions.
A sunspot is an area of highly organized magnetic activity on the surface of the sun. The new 11-year cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, is expected to build gradually, with the number of sunspots and solar storms reaching a maximum by 2011 or 2012, though devastating storms can occur at any time.
During a solar storm, highly charged material ejected from the sun may head toward Earth, where it can bring down power grids, disrupt critical communications and threaten astronauts with harmful radiation. Storms can also knock out commercial communications satellites and swamp Global Positioning System signals.
Last April, in coordination with an international panel of solar experts, NOAA issued a forecast that Solar Cycle 24 would start in March 2008, plus or minus 6 months. The panel was evenly split between those predicting a strong or weak cycle. Both camps agree that the sooner the new cycle takes over the waning previous cycle, the more likely that it will be a strong season with many sunspots and major storms.
The new sunspot, identified as #10,981, is the latest visible spot to appear since NOAA began numbering them on Jan. 5, 1972. Its high-latitude location at 27 degrees North, and its negative polarity leading to the right in the Northern Hemisphere are clear-cut signs of a new solar cycle, according to NOAA experts. The first active regions and sunspots of a new solar cycle can emerge at high latitudes, while those from the previous cycle continue to form closer to the equator.
Farming in the future
Actually, the future is now. As part of a yearlong celebration for this publication’s 100th year in print, we’ll be looking back into the archives to see what we’ve gotten right and wrong over the years. Rather than say this column was wrong, let’s just say it was a little before its time. Looking to the year 2000 (from that quaint time of 1967), the report was based on collaboration between Michigan State farm specialists and Ford Motor Company technicians.
The top image represents the Modern Bucolic, a tidy organization of biology and industry where climate control for beast and plant alike push production to (then) unheard of levels. Our Today’s Farmer correspondent pointed to the future of livestock and the high-rise cattle barn (featuring 1,100-pound cattle at 10 months of age).
In the field-crops image, we see an articulated-cab tractor that “may be powered by fuel cells.” While most tractors these days are decidedly fixed-cab, we can bet that after the spring fuel bill many growers wouldn’t mind trying a fuel cell. One note to the folks of Michigan State and Ford: the blue ones are now called New Holland.
Technology + scale = better odds for spring
Here is an interesting set of statistics from Farming in the 21st Century, a report from Purdue academics Michael Boehlje and Bruce Erickson:
“New technology has dramatically changed timeliness constraints that have been a significant limit on the growth potential for many grain operations. The ability to plant and harvest crops during the limited number of suitable field days in the spring and fall without encountering yield penalties is critical to overall efficiency and profitability.
The development of guidance and auto-steer technology combined with larger planting and harvesting equipment (36-row planters and 12-row combines) has dramatically altered the timeliness constraint.
For example, if planting 2,000 acres in Illinois starting April 1 using a 24-row planter and working 12-hour days, there is about a 70 percent chance of finishing planting by May 1. If auto-guidance allows 16 hours per day and improves efficiency 5 percent, chances improve to 85 percent. With one 36-row planter and guidance, the chances of completion by May 1 exceed 90 percent.”
To view the full report click www.agecon.purdue.edu/extension/pubs/paer/2007/november/boehlje.asp
500 million non-vegetarians
We often hear about the market-changing population statistics of China. So consider that China’s one-child policy has had profound effects on the country’s population, and, as most policy does, some unintended consequences. A rising middle class with fewer children per couple will bring with it an increase in pet ownership if trends hold. That’s a point the agricultural commentariat carried to the meeting season this year. Here’s futurist Lowell Catlett at an Arizona Farm Bureau meeting:
“It happens to everybody. When you rise out of poverty into the middle class, you get a pet. One half billion little dogs and cats [will] now have a home in China and they’re not eating table scraps. And if you don’t think that’s important to American agriculture I invite you to walk through the baby food aisle at the supermarket and then walk through the pet food aisle in the same store and I guarantee you the pet food aisle on average will be 10 times larger. We [will] have a half a billion more mouths to feed in China. They’re four-legged, but they’ve got a mouth. It staggers the imagination.”
Dennis Avery is director of the Center for Global Food Issues and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a non-partisan policy research organization promoting global security, prosperity, and freedom. At the 2008 Missouri Governor’s Conference on Agriculture, Avery said:
“Not only are we getting population growth, but we’re getting pet population. Australia has 53 percent cat and dog ownership. We’re a bit higher than that. It has begun in China, and if they match our pet ownership, in less than 50 years, that will be half a billion companion cats and dogs, none of them vegetarians.”
Both speakers focused on the statistic to illustrate that the world demand for protein is not likely to recede from the high demand we see in today’s market. Click here to respond to this article Top of page
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