While we don’t have to worry about starvation like the Irish due to lack of crop diversity, it is interesting that we are seeing the same mold that caused the Irish Potato Famine widespread in the USA now. – Anthony
Potato famine disease striking home gardens in U.S.
Reuters – Dark brown lesions on stems, with white fungal growth developing under moist conditions, are characteristic … By Julie Steenhuysen Julie Steenhuysen – Fri Jul 10, 5:22 pm ET
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.
“Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States,” said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in Riverhead, New York.
She said the fungal disease, spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United States.
“Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart and Lowe’s are some of the stores the plants have been seen in,” McGrath said in a telephone interview.
The disease, known officially as Phytophthora infestans, causes large mold-ringed olive-green or brown spots on plant leaves, blackened stems, and can quickly wipe out weeks of tender care in a home garden.
McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States. The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.
“What’s unique about it this year is we have never seen plants affected in garden centers being sold to home gardeners,” she said.
This year’s cool, wet weather created perfect conditions for the disease. “Hopefully, it will turn sunny,” McGrath said. “If we get into our real summer hot dry weather, this disease is going to slow way down.”
FUNGICIDES WILL CONTROL BLIGHT
According to its website, the University Maryland’s Plant Diagnostic Lab got a suspect tomato sample as early as June 12, very early in the tomato growing season, which runs from April-September.
McGrath said the risk is that many gardeners will not recognize it, putting commercial farms and especially organic growers at risk.
“My concern is for growers. They are going to have to put a lot more time and effort in trying to control the disease. It’s going to be a very tough year,” she said.
“This pathogen can move great distances in the air. It often does little jumps, but it can make some big leaps.”
McGrath said the impact on the farmer will depend on how much the pathogen is spread. “Eastern New York is seeing a lot of disease,” she said.
She said commercial farmers will be able to use fungicides containing chlorothalonil to control the blight.
And while some sprays have also been approved for organic use, many organic farmers do not use them, making it much harder to control.
“If they are not on top of this right from the very beginning, it can go very fast,” she said.
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To Texas boys
I lived in Laredo from 64-69 .The day I arrived it was 102 degrees. The day I left it had been over 100 most every day in July and August.It was a great sight seeing Laredo disappear in my rear view mirror.
From what little understanding I’ve gleaned from the BBC, I’d taken it, as axiomatic, that both flora and fauna respond more to the climate projections of the 2050’s than the weather as at present.
I find it depressing that certain flora are displaying denialist sympathies by ignoring the ‘heat in the pipeline’. Clearly, they are no longer disciples of Big Al and have been bought by Big Oil. Next they’ll be shrilling that carbon dioxide is good. They are so unscientific that they even scoff at Gender Studies and Global Warming as being disconnected. In my sandals- eat my beard!
Everyone must know thanks to that excellent scientific treatise- An inconvenient truth- that cause is ALWAYS after the effect. Those excellent Vostok ice-core studies clearly demonstrated that. The Irish potato Famine of the 1840’s was undoubtedly a product of the ensuing Western Fossilificationings.
The question is folks. How do we stop this irreverance spreading to other lifeforms- Frogs, butterflies, the senate, weasels and so on?
Gavin-My PC is a wee bit off-colour at the moment so if it doesn’t appear on RuleClimate – forgive me if I have to repost!
Arthur Glass (13:21:56) :
Poor Malthus was fourteen years dead in 1848.
1848 was a year of crop failures throughout Europe, and also a year of bloody revolutionary ferment. The two stories are obviously related.
1848 crop failures were due to religious reasons more than to potatoes plagues. Many believers of the second advent of Jesus abandoned their fields in1833 and again in 1844 and 1845 because they thought that cultivating the land would be no longer necessary with the arrival of the new world. They sold their properties and did not cultivate the land for some years until Miller’s death in 1849. William Miller, Charles Fitch, Charles Finney and Josiah Litch had much to see with this idea.
Wha …. no more ‘Transcendent Rant’ blog category?
How am I going to get the opinion from ‘the other side of the tracks’ (as one of my Mom’s Aunts who lived next to a set of train tracks used to put it) …
.
.
Q: What happens when an organic farmer loses his entire crop to a treatable disease or infestation?
A: He goes bust.
So its not a stretch to say that the organic food fad has put the stability of basic foodstuffs at risk and that prices will rise.
Pamela Gray (11:13:59) :
“Texans need to understand that dust storms and crop failures are necessary in order to expose the nutrient rich top soil to the wind.”
That’s called soil erosion. It is not beneficial.
ohioholic (09:09:44) :
Weather is not climate.
When it cools in the face of predicted catastrophic warming, it’s not climate, it’s just weather..
But when a heat wave hits somewhere or an iceberg calves into the sea, it’s OMG Global Warming (aka new paint job=Climate Change).
Weather IS an integral part of climate, because without it, Climate is dead. Turn off the Satellites, Meteorlogical instruments, shut down the computers, quit watching the nightly weather report, and go to bed.
Most of Texas is not too bad off for rainfall–there are areas that are somewhat drier than average, and areas that are running average or even above for rainfall.
However, South Texas is the only part of the US that’s in Exceptional drought.
OT but thought you’d be interested: check out the headline on the front of the UK edition of The Spectator this week:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/buy-this-issue/3687363/buy-the-current-issue.thtml
It’s more evidence that climate scepticism is steadily becoming mainstream.
Somehow, the Northwest has enjoyed a warm spell the last month….after 2 years below normal (in my estimate) But this spring was the first I saw a fungus such as this on my hedge. The nursery said some fungi can rob the roots of water. I cleared away any mulch around the stalks and watered heavily. The water, and the sudden warmth seems to have saved them this year. But this area is already cool and moldy most of the year. We need every bit of the little warmth we get…
a jones (08:49:21) :
An old fashioned but effective method of dealing with this for gardeners is Bordeaux Mixture, basically copper sulphate and slaked lime. I imagine it can still be bought in the US.
I’d keep quiet about this – especially if it works. It sounds like something the eco-police would ban.
Arthur Glass (13:21:56) :
“Ireland of the 1840’s and it’s struggle with the British empire and Thomas Malthus.”
Poor Malthus was fourteen years dead in 1848.
1848 was a year of crop failures throughout Europe, and also a year of bloody revolutionary ferment. The two stories are obviously related.
It should read Thomas Malthus theories, It does make more sense then. English is only my first language.
The theory as I understand it goes, the poor are the cause of poverty because there are too many useless, unemployed eaters. This was the how the Irish were seen and completely ignores the actual cause of poverty. In the Irish case the poverty and social conditions which contributed to the famine had everything to do with living next door to a sea going superpower which had a thing for trade monopoly’s, not very much to do with how many Irish there were.
henrychance (15:29:34) : I know someone who is a decent person in almost every way. But not long ago asked where “organic dirt” could be obtained. For me, that was the ultimate in goofy environmentalism.
Hey hang on Anthony,
The Met Office predict that by 2080 it is likely that the growing season will have increased by around 40 days:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/effects/seasons.html
And they have botanical evidence to prove it!
Here is another Earth shattering statement from another Great Scientist of Our Age:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090711/sc_mcclatchy/3269899
I had to read it twice, before realizing that the “Irish Potato Famine” was dramatic license. This blight has been occurring in the (warmer) post 1975 Global Warming era.
(I say CO2, you say cosmic rays; or ‘Its a Mystery’, or…whatever the cause. Temperatures have been rising.)
“McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States.” So, this is the 5th outbreak since 1988.
So, we are not dealing with the cooler temperatures in Europe, back in 1850. Which suggests that we are dealing with increased rainfalls that produce increased humidity. And maybe its just the relatively cooler temperatures of a La Nina event…
And, for this regional situation: “from Maine to Ohio”…
Since regional computer forecasts suggest increased rainfall in the northeast U.S….
Maybe increased blight is to be expected if GW increases!!!
“Late blight has nevcer occurred this early and this widespread in the United States.”
So…what else is new…besides the higher temperatures?
Michael Ronayne
The Irish potato famine was not an isolated Irish problem but a failure of the potato croup throughout Europe
As the Irish Census records were destroyed in the Irish Revolution of June 1922, by IRA military action
The story that the Irish were too stupid to grow anything but potatoes is part of the genocide cover-up.
I have to agree with you, but it must be recognised that this was only a relatively minor success on the part of British Intelligence, in its effort io control the climate for millitary and social engineering purposes. Many people consider, despite the fact that it was a rather early and primitive climatic intervention, that the severe winter of 1777-78 at Valley Forge was in fact their finest hour from the early pre-20th century period.
These days of course the Hadley Centre brooks few rivals in its influrnce on the climate 🙂
I go ballistic when I read of the oh-so-trendy “organic farming” gurus spreading pest and disease through pig ignorance. This is what I mean. Here’s an organic farming trendy piece, though with teeth gritted because of the mention of (cut to scary music) “fungicides” –
Without these fungicides or effective alternative control methods, this income (of 15 to 35 million Euros) would be lost and threaten the
economic viability of organic potato production and/or whole organic farming businesses (especially those which rely heavily on the income from potato crops) in many areas of the EU. Since EU policies are aimed at supporting an expansion of organic production, a replacement for copper containing and other chemical fungicides is urgently required to avoid
such consequences. In addition, any increase in late blight incidence on organic farms resulting from poorer control could also influence blight epidemics in neighbouring conventional farms and threaten conventional production systems.
(Now we come to the type of belief “science” that riddles climate studies):
“An integrated systems approach to late blight management in organic systems that eliminates or reduces the need for copper-based fungicides could solve these problems. Such an approach should integrate use of (i) resistant varieties, (ii) agronomic strategies (iii) alternative treatments and (iv) optimise their effectiveness by utilising existing blight forecasting systems and aim to maximise synergistic interactions between these components.”
http://orgprints.org/10650/10/leifert-wilcockson-2005-blight_mop-report-chapter9.pdf
wtf does that mean?
For the sake of sanity, why not use the professonal resources of educated chemists who have devised effective, mostly organic chemicals to reduce the harm of this oomycete? Why not note the warnings such as –
“If spread of late blight during the seed handling operation increases the risk for seed transmission, then application of a seed dressing is an obvious preventive approach to managing this phase of the disease. Our research has shown that a seed piece treatment is effective only when one or more of the components of the fungicide product has efficacy against P. infestans (6,13). At least four products containing one or two fungicides (maneb, mancozeb or cymoxanil plus mancozeb) with activity against P. infestans are registered.”
http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/pub/php/management/potatolate/
What makes me ropable is that the simple minds of the organic farmers (who want to ban even the limited success of copper teatment, while being a bit vacant about treatment regimes) have already caused the banning, the deregistration, of several potentially useful chemicals.
This is wrong. This is akin to taking chlorination from domestic water supplies and claiming that the resulting large increase in human deaths at least benefited from purer deaths, not chemically-contaminated ones.
For hobbiest hop farmers around here (northern Indiana), not only is the cool, cloudy and moist weather killing yields, but downey mildew is also a big problem. The early harvest for Cascades is hot, and the late harvest Goldings are not ripening at all like they should.
Hop prices worldwide are still at record levels. Let’s hope the weather is better in Yakima Washington, East Anglia England, and Moravia. Last year whole hop prices were at $30 a pound (in 2000 they were about $2 bucks a pound).
Now I know why hop farming died out so quickly in Wisconsin and New York in the 1890s.
As I write this it is 67 degrees and cloudy … in San Jose, California in the middle of July. It is raining in Hayward and San Francisco. Oakland is 62 degrees and is having a thunderstorm. The middle of July is generally pretty hot here.
Arthur Glass (13:35:04) :
Oh, we have bioengineered much. Trouble is, nature will do an end run on the monoculture.
It’s too late when the crops fail.
crosspatch (20:15:28) :
Yep, it’s moved south.
This keeps up, it will be moving south even more.
The Yukon and parts of Alaska will be uninhabitable.
Tonite in La Grande, Oregon-we are USDA Zone 5a/b here- about 1000ft. less altitude than Pamela Gray- we finally are having a warmish night, I too have green
blossomless tomatoes-these are “Early Girl” and “Ace ” I still hold out hope that I may have steak and tomatoes-by August-if it doesn’t frost…
If the Irish had in the 1845s the fungicide Captan for combating the blight, there wouldn’t be now so many Irish cops in New York.
But famines have been a constant during the entire history of our cruel planet. This is a summary with original photos (quite interesting) from a National Geographic magazine issue of July 1917 about “Fearful Famines of the Past”. There are statistics about the death toll in Ireland, before the archives were burned in 1922.
And let the organic farmers go the way of the Dodo. Bring some good, honest, juicy and savory legumes and frutis grown with good GM tech.
Sorry, I forgot to paste the link to the article in 1917 Nat Geo issue:
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Polit/Famines.html