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Homework answers / question archive / The environment drives a great deal of what happens in crop production across the US

The environment drives a great deal of what happens in crop production across the US

Management

The environment drives a great deal of what happens in crop production across the US. This exercise is designed to give you an opportunity to explore several crop production information sources that may be of use to you as you think about crop production.

  1. Find the US field crops planted and harvested.
    • Go to http://www.nass.usda.gov/Data_and_Statistics/ (Links to an external site.) and select:
    • From the left-hand menu: Crops and Plants
    • In the center selection windows:
      • Sector - Crops
      • Group - Field Crops
      • Commodity – Your choice
    • Check boxes for data items – [Your Crop] acres planted and [Your Crop] acres harvested
    • On the reported data, find a year with a large difference in acres planted and harvested. What is the difference?
  1. Find the locations where the crop is planted
    • Go to http://www.nass.usda.gov/Data_and_Statistics/ (Links to an external site.) and select
    • From the left-hand menu: Charts and Maps
    • Under the Crops and Plants header:
      • County Maps
      • Same crop you chose above (you may have to look at multiple maps, for example there are 3 types of wheat)
    • Download PDF of Harvested acreage by County for your crop.
    • While this map is for 2016, assume that the same areas were planted in the year you are interested in.
  2. Find the environmental conditions in the year you identified
  3. Looking at your harvested acreage map(s) from #2 and your drought maps, what is one plausible explanation for the reduction in crop acreage harvested? If the crop was planted but not harvested, what happened to it? How does that affect the producers?

Bonus: Look at the Palmer Drought Index map in effect right now. Do you predict any problems for crop production in the US this year?

Guidelines

A complete and meaningful response to the discussion prompt will earn the required points. You may instead choose to respond to another student's original response to the prompt, which will also count as points if it is complete and meaningful, for example, raises additional support for an argument, respectfully challenges a position, or raises meaningful questions.

In each Discussion forum, if you both respond to the original prompt and engage in a dialog with a classmate in an exchange of more than 2 posts (your original post or a classmate's), you can earn an additional one point in that forum, gaining an additional point on the Discussion.

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I looked at the planting and harvesting of barley and noticed that there was a significant difference in 2018. There were  2,548,000 acres planted but only 1,982,000 acres harvested, a difference of 566,000 acres that were seemingly lost. According to the county maps from the USDA, barley is grown mainly in the far North (think Montana, North Dakota, Idaho, Washington State). So, it isn't in the regions that are experiencing "exceptional droughts" but could still be at risk. 

And it seems like this was the case in 2018. Looking at the drought maps, I saw that while that region started out as "moderately moist" in April, it started drying quickly in mid May and even more so through June. The western states weren't hit quite as bad and only suffered "mid-range dryness" from the April to October period. However, the North Dakota region was in moderate to severe drought conditions through the months of August and September. I know that barley, like wheat, can be victim of drought stress and I think this likely hurt the harvest in 2018, especially in the more eastern states of the barley-producing region. Because the drought started later in the growing season, I'm guessing that the barley harvest started strong enough but much of it failed to develop to a harvestable degree. The harvest likely would have been worse overall except that the severe drought was limited to the east. 

The unused barley would have had to been cut and cleared after the failed harvest and I'm sure it caused a significant loss in profit for the producers because it's one of the few products that fairs so well in the freezing winters of the far north. 

 

Bonus: This year's drought map looks somewhat similar to the one I saw in 2018. But the droughts in the southwest were already far worse in late June than they are this year. So far, it looks like it will be a better year for barley. Those northeastern states that got hit so hard in 2018 are still "moderately moist"! However, almost all of CO is already in a severe drought and a quick google search says that they're main products are wheat, corn, and hay. Though, I don't know that this is enough to throw off the entire country's harvest stats for the year. I suppose we'll find out. 

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