EDP Spin Extreme Weather Lies
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward
Ozzie farmer has the answer to Norfolk’s “extreme weather”!!
An Australian farmer who has found green ways to grow crops in extreme heat and droughts has given advice to his Norfolk counterparts.
Grant Sims spoke at a virtual online meeting hosted by the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association and its Yield (Young, Innovative, Enterprising, Learning and Developing) rural business network.
With extreme weather becoming more common in East Anglia, he explained how he has optimised the health and resilience of his soils to cope with the rigours of an Australian summer.
He farms 8,500 acres in Victoria, including a 300-strong herd of Angus cattle.
He also runs Down Under Covers, a business which sells seasonal multi-species cover crop mixes to farmers across Australia.
And keeping soil covered with plants between commercial crops is one of the key "guiding principles" on his farm, which can receive less than 200mm of rain during the growing season, and often sees 40-degree heat and heavy storms in summer.
He said "cover is king", helping insulate the soil and improve its biology, while a variety of root depths breaks up compaction and increase the water-holding capacity.
"One thing we are really focused on in our soil health is to improve that infiltration and water-holding capacity," he said.
"Most of the time we look at the area we are farming two-dimensionally, but really we are farming a three-dimensional plane.
"So if we can increase the rooting depth and the water-holding capacity, we can make use of this out-of-season rainfall, store it, or grow something over the summer which has traditionally not been done – and that is where we implement our cover crops to get the diversity in."
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/australian-farmer-grant-sims-speaks-to-norfolk-farmers-8628500
Somehow, I don’t quite see Norfolk turning into Victoria anytime soon!
But what about all of this extreme weather and drought, I hear you say!
As far as April to September rainfall is concerned, there is no trend whatsoever in East Anglia. Dry summers were just as common in the past:
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?ajgkeo7oovr2mbo7te9b62mrik
Neither are there any trends in October to March rainfall, nor evidence of unusually dry or wet years:
And with summer daytime temperatures averaging less than 23C, I would suggest Norfolk’s farmers have more things to worry about than the weather!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The BBC (cough) reported last year that Extreme temperature was 25 to 28 deg C for three days. I crossed my fingers here in Suffolk but it didn’t happen.
I’m in Herts, not too far from you.
The BBC (Cough) got it wrong here too, yet again.
Our ‘Extreme’ temperatures just never happened either.
3 whole days! Caused by an easily explicable weather phenomenon.
Sound practical advice however.
The advice given will presumably still be of benefit at lower temperatures, helping to prevent compaction of the soil and boosting yields. Amazing how farmers always seem to find a way.
On maps of South Australia you can (or you could) see Goyder’s Line that marked the maximum extent of land with enough rainfall for wheat. Sometimes in wet periods farmers would plough and sow beyond these lines. It resulted in lost crops.
A line drawn in 1865 was still applicable 150 years later. Climate change, eh?
Goyder’s line represents the 10 inch average annual rainfall (250 m.m.) In the late 1860’s into the 1870’s farmers ploughed further and further north. Then came the dry years and much of the newly settled area was abandoned.
When the Anglican Church in S.A. wanted a second bishop they adopted the title Bishop of Willochra, after the second biggest town in South Australia with 30,000 inhabitants. I passed through Willochra in the 1960’s and no-one had lived there for over 30 years.
His farm (6th generation) is at Lockington, about halfway between Bendigo and Echuca in Victoria. Rainfall is variable, but I wouldn’t call it a dry region (by Australian standards).
Bendigo
January 2022 Total 19.2
January 1992-2022 Average Total 35.0
January 1992-2022 Wettest Total 177.8
January 1992-2022 Wettest 24hr Total 64.2
January 1992-2022 Driest Total 0.0
Echuca (on the Murray river)
January 2022 Total 11.9
January 1882-2022 Average Total 27.4
January 1882-2022 Wettest Total 224.9
January 1882-2022 Wettest 24hr Total 90.7
January 1882-2022 Driest Total 0.0
There is a strong low moving across mid to southern Australia bringing heavy rain in places. The Eyre peninsula in SA is normally hot +dry in summer but parts have had 100+ m.m. this month (so far). Adelaide is expecting 20 m.m. Sunday 23rd. but the BOM forecasts have been unusually erratic lately. I expect Bendigo will get rain in the coming week.
I’m not sure about the current ownership but the EDP used to have an extremely wealthy owner who was dead keen on the EU, anti-UKIP to the extent that we could never get positive coverage no matter how well we were doing. Their bosses even put out a national paper — was it The European, New European? — which ran every project fear story they could find.
There’s something about being extremely rich and owning a megaphone like a newspaper that makes these people susceptible to a brain parasite — EU good UK bad, solar power good reliable electricity bad, turbines good wildlife irrelevant… and nothing that makes sense can penetrate the brain fog that results.
JF
Rcapital Partners : Seems Archant went bust ..so passed pension responsibilities onto the government scheme.
“On August 30, it was announced that the operational units of Archant had been sold to private equity firm Rcapital Partners, (and the pension funds transferred to UK Government Pension Protection Fund); the holding companies were put into administration, making the existing shares worthless”
At the time of the CVA the Archant shares were worthless.
I can’t see who was the biggest shareholder.
Archant owned the Ne European
https://pressgazette.co.uk/archant-bought-out-new-owner-shareholders/
You can look up the various old directors of various Archant companies
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/04040110/officers
It’s pretty clear from that graph that 1930-50 was “dryer” than recent years in terms of winter rainfall. As ever with the UK, the obvious feature is variability. That means claiming trends from short term data is stupid.
Off Topic
Video clip of the Unmentioned Insurrection
Thursday October 14th 2021
Lefty climate protesters try to storm into the Department of the Interior
“multiple injuries including security personnel
and one officer had to be airlifted to a hospital
50 plus were arrested”
.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNRVmBYBvIY&t=50s
Such anti-capitalist occupation of buildings is not new
The Occupy movement having done stunts for years
Yet the media feigned outrage at “mainly peaceful” protestors walking into the Capitol
Congressman Steube asks Merrick Garland why they are treated differently ?
.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BZJnwllpOQ&t=137s
Longer clips show more detail protesters breaking through and occupying the building
.. https://youtu.be/pG64a3B9wwg
… https://twitter.com/FightFossils/status/1448689189562851335
The establishment said “Oh this is just a peaceful protest”
For info: Here is a link to two rain fall monitors at pumping stations on the Fens, West Norfolk.
Obviously not something that the EDP checked.
http://www.downhammarketidbs.org.uk/?s=rain+fall&search=OK
I graphed the data April through September and like the Cambridge Botanical Gardens graph a fairly flat trend is indicated. Does also show the drop for some years in the 90s but then moving above the average for many years. Reminds, a local farmer saying a few years ago that during the 90s he constructed a reservoir and when finished it never stopped raining. 🙂
https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/rain-sun-sun-rain
This business of “more common” is so bogus. Tony Heller documents how Australia like California has always had periods of drought and wetness. Per the scammers if it wasn’t for fossil fuel CO2 we would be living in the garden of Eden.