All posts tagged "Sécheresse"

New York (AFP) - Months without rain have left farmers across the vast US Midwest, part of the country's essential "breadbasket," seeing crop yields in freefall, with some fields too damaged to harvest. At the 4,000-acre (1,600-hectare) Tucker Farms in Venango, Nebraska, "we were only able to harvest... around 500" acres, most of it wheat, said Rachel Tucker. Much of the rest had shriveled up under a relentlessly hot sun. The drought has attracted grasshoppers, which threatened the flowers the Tuckers also grow -- until they brought in praying mantises to control the winged pests. If the Ameri......

Huron (United States) (AFP) - Crushed by a devastating drought and new water restrictions, Daniel Hartwig had no choice but to pull thousands of precious, fragrant almond trees from his California farm.  "It breaks your heart," he sighed as he surveyed the once vibrant landscape before him -- curled, yellowed leaves covering the shrunken husks that would have been this year's crop of almonds, had the water arrived. Their exposed roots are already starting to turn powdery with rot, and the temperature of almost 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) on this summer morning speeds their deco......

Fresno (United States) (AFP) - Holding a V-shaped branch point down, David Sagouspe examines the cracked soil of a California farm. Under the blazing sun, he takes a breath and sets off, mechanically turning the branch five times towards the sky and five times towards the ground. He stops, marks the spot with a pink flag and nods. "People would pay a lot of money for that strata right there," he says, referring to underground water. For more than 40 years, Sagouspe has worked as a dowser, also known as a "water witch," offering to help the largest farmers in central California find groundwater......

Oroville (United States) (AFP) - Summer has not even begun and Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir in California that provides drinking water to more than 25 million people, is at less than half of its average capacity at this time of year. It is a worrying indication of the worsening drought conditions in the northern part of the Golden State. "When we go into a year like this with the reservoir low and with really dry conditions throughout the state, that is concerning," John Yarbrough, the assistant deputy director of the California Department of Water Resources, told AFP. "The rese......