drought

As part of a visit to land-locked Malawi, Second Lady Jill Biden announced an additional $20 million in U.S. food assistance to offset the effects of drought that began in 2015 and was magnified by the El Niño weather pattern. An estimated 40 percent of the population of the country in southeastern Africa are in need of humanitarian aid.

More than 60 million people worldwide, including 40 million in eastern and southern Africa, are at risk of hunger due to the El Niño weather pattern that is now waning, said leaders of three UN agencies.

In an about-face, federal officials will not be cutting farm water supplies from Shasta Dam, California's largest, after all, reports The Sacramento Bee. Federal fisheries officials have been in tense conversation over the last month with state and federal water regulators over how much of Shasta’s water to hold back in order to protect the endangered winter-run Chinook salmon. The National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had seemed set to seriously limit water deliveries to Central Valley farmers.

Stanford researchers say that California’s drought-stricken Central Valley harbors three times the supply of groundwater previously thought. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, points up the need to develop a better understanding of deep aquifers, and has implications for regions beyond California where drought is a problem.

The 15 nations of the Caribbean, an array of islands and coastal nations, experiences drought-like weather every year and can expect droughts to be increasingly frequent and intense due to climate change, says an FAO report. "Agriculture is the most likely sector to be impacted, with serious economic and social consequences," said the UN agency.

An unseasonably dry spring induced a moderate drought in Iowa, the country’s leader in corn and soy production, the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor reports. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory yesterday after heat index values reached between 101-105 F, a chief concern for farm operators working on Iowa’s 87,000-plus farms.

More than half the flow of rivers in the upper Colorado Basin is derived from groundwater, according to a study by the U.S. Geological Society. The study's authors hope it will compel state water managers to ask important questions, since rivers are a key source of irrigation and drinking water across the west. For instance, should a farmer’s use of a nearby river be limited if he or she is also pumping large amounts of groundwater?

Malawi is facing a food crisis as the southern Africa region wrestles with drought and high temperatures. Due to record high winter temperatures hitting southern Africa during planting season, Malawi’s corn production fell by 12 percent in April leaving the country short of 1 million tonnes of grain during its worst food crisis in a decade, The East African said.

In California, federal fisheries regulators are mulling two new plans to save the state’s endangered winter-run Chinook salmon and Delta smelt—plans that could mean serious water shortages for farmers. While this year saw ample rain and snowfall in the northern half of the state, regulators warn that the precipitation wasn’t enough to make up for several years of historic drought.

A heat wave, with temperatures up to 12 degrees above normal, enveloped the Pacific Northwest with abnormally dry conditions, said the weekly Drought Monitor. "Long-term drought remains in California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico as we move into the heat of summer," said the Monitor, which said 84 percent of California was in drought.

Chickpea prices have soared 44 percent in the past year to reach an all-time high in India, says Agrimoney. India is the world's largest consumer of chickpeas but the pulse is in short supply because of drought.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says one of the strongest El Niño weather patterns in history is over, and it gives a 50-percent chance that a La Niña pattern will be upon us by the end of this year, reports the Financial Times. La Niña "typically brings cooler and wetter conditions in the Pacific and more storms in Europe and the United States."

California growers will idle less land than previously due to drought but losses will be around $1 billion to $1.5 billion, compared to an estimated $1.8 billion in 2015, says agricultural lender CoBank. Losses would fall heaviest on farmers with corn, wheat, cotton, alfalfa and pasture land.

A report by the United Nations Environment Program says drought and higher temperatures, forecast as part of climate change, can trigger a build-up in crops of chemical compounds that are toxic to animals and humans. Nitrates can accumulate to dangerous levels in grain during drought, while carcinogenic fungal aflatoixins are expected to become an increasing risk in higher latitudes as average temperatures rise.

The Justice Department has dropped a court fight over the lesser prairie chicken, a step applauded by Western congressmen but that also prompted criticism about whether the battle is really over, reports McClatchy. The Interior Department listed the bird as a threatened species in 2014, but a federal judge in Texas ruled that the government failed to follow its own rules in making the determination.

In a major shift in policy, California's cities, water districts and private companies will set their own water conservation targets instead of being handed assignments by the state, Gov. Jerry Brown announced as drought conditions eased across the state. The new approach, expected to see approval by the State Water Resources Board of May 18, also would require more irrigation districts to quantify water-use efficiency by growers and spell out how they will handle shortages in the future.

East Porterville, an unincorporated part of agricultural Tulare County in California's Central Valley, won international attention as case study in suffering when the drought entered its fourth year in 2014. The shallow wells supplying residents went dry as the water table fell -- so many that East Porterville has 12 percent of the failed wells in the state.

One-quarter of the world’s crops, from bananas and plantains to rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans, are grown in areas where the water supply is highly stressed or highly variable, said the World Resources Institute on Wednesday. Rice, wheat, and corn, three of the most important crops, are particularly vulnerable, it said.