Can Farms Bounce Back From Superstorms Like Sandy?

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From: "Tom Philpott at Mother Jones" <do_not_reply@motherjones.com>
Date: Oct 31, 2012 5:57 AM
Subject: Can Farms Bounce Back From Superstorms Like Sandy?
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FOOD FOR THOUGHT FOOD + FARMING FROM TOM PHILPOTT
MOTHER JONES October 31, 2012   THE MAIN DISH Can Farms Bounce Back From Superstorms Like Sandy? Farmers have always lived with what the novelist Henry James called the "imagination of disaster"—the keen sense that there's always something, anything, that can go wrong. In that long interval between sowing tiny seeds and reaping valuable crops, droughts, floods, plagues of pests, tumbling trees, ravaging beasts, mysterious molds—all threaten your livelihood and haunt your dreams. But the last seven years have been ridiculous. In 2005, the sixth-most powerful hurricane ever recorded blitzed into the Mississippi River Delta region, flattening $900 million worth of crops. Less than two years after Katrina, a "500-year flood" visited the Midwestern corn belt—which, as the US Geological Survey pointed out at the time, marked the second "500-year flood" in 15 years. In 2011, Texas suffered the most severe 12-month drought in its recorded history, resulting in a stunning $5.2 billion in crop and livestock losses, eclipsing the state's previous record high in crop losses set just five years earlier. Then came last August's Hurricane Irene, which deluged farmland and destroyed crops from Puerto Rico to Canada, taking a particular toll on farmers in Vermont and New York state. And now comes unprecedented "superstorm" Sandy. Will our nation's farms ever recover? And can they adapt to this stormy new reality?  [READ MORE]   SIDE DISH Big Sugar's Sweet Little Lies This Halloween, we take you deep inside an industry's campaign to frost its image, hold regulators at bay, and keep scientists from asking: Does sugar kill? [READ MORE]   ADVERTISEMENT Furious about global warming, wealth concentration, voter suppression, Citizens United? Love Elizabeth Warren, Dennis Kucinich, Al Gore? Then place my paperback 95 THESES UPDATED: An Urgent Call for Christian Action against Global Warming and Wealth Concentration on doors of churches in your area BEFORE the election! 131 pages, $7.95. "To order by Paypal, credit email account: pwm223408865@yahoo.com or call author at 908-859-1778 and leave clear message & phone no."	RECIPE OF THE WEEK Tom's Kitchen: A Spicy-Hot Soup to Crush Your Cold Laid low by a cold? This soup will lift your spirits. [READ MORE]     MORE FROM MOJO NASA Warned New York About Hurricane Danger Six Years Ago Scientists told us a storm like Sandy would be catastrophic. When will we listen? [READ MORE]     Follow Tom Philpott on Twitter   Read the Tom Philpott blog
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