Like thousands of other farmers, Lynn Girty of Blenheim is gathering all the facts he can to make this season's planting decisions. He's heard there'll be no bumper crop coming out of South America. What's more, the carryover stocks of American grain are too low to leave a cushion should bad weather hit the Corn Belt this summer.

"Whenever there's a tight supply, everyone starts looking at
the weather," says Girty, who is also chairman of the Ontario Agricultural Weather Services Committee.

According to a number of predictions, the U.S. Corn Belt will be dry this summer, pushing grain prices higher. Elwynn Taylor, a climatologist at Iowa State University, says the weather in the central portion of the North American continent is influenced by a huge mass of water off the west coast of Peru, where the well-known El Niņo warm-water phenomenon occurs. After a four-year reign, El Niņo gave way to its cold-water opposite, La Niņa, last fall. The decline of El Niņo resulted in hotter, drier weather in the Corn Belt last fall, Taylor says, and yields dropped off.

"This has left parts of the corn belt crucially short of sub-soil moisture," he says. And without good rains this season, 1996 yields will also be down. Meanwhile, a strong La Niņa would likely result in hotter, drier weather.

Taylor says recent ocean temperature measurements suggest that "La Niņa is now showing signs of faltering. If that continues its harsh effects may dissipate." At the moment, it is difficult to predict exactly how the growing season will shape up, he says.

With this kind of uncertainty coming from the seasonal weather forecasters, farmers have to rely on their own judgments about the coming growing season. But according to recent research out of the University of Guelph, many wrongly believe the weather will be similar to the previous year.

The Guelph study examined the hybrid selections, by corn heat unit (CHU), of 100 corn producers in Lambton and Wellington counties from 1989 to 1994.

"We were surprised to find farmers seem to adjust so much of their investment in crops to conditions they experience in the previous year. And this includes experienced farmers," says Barry Smit, one of the Guelph researchers.

"Last year is not a measure of anything but last year," Smit says.

The study makes that point abundantly clear. Following the exceptional warmth of the 1991 growing season, and also an almost-as-warm 1990 season, many farmers ended up putting more acreage into high-yielding but longer-maturing varieties.

In 1992, a large proportion of corn growers selected the longer maturing corn, setting the stage for disaster when 1992 turned into what became known as 'the year without a summer'. But 1992 was by no means the worst summer ever. According to the CHU record for the study area, the growing season of 1974 was even colder, and 1979 wasn't far off.

CHU maps are only a guideline, Smit says; probabilities that take the variability of weather into account should also be included. "If, for example, an area is rated at 2500 to 2600, it should state that there is a 50-per-cent chance of getting those units, and that 25 per cent of the time they could get more. And within that 25, there's a five-per-cent chance of hitting 2800 or something like that."

To make better planting decisions, farmers need more information on climatic risks in their areas to develop hybrid-mix strategies "so that detrimental effects of climatic variation are reduced," Smit says.

Accurate information of this kind is now harder to come by, however, since historical weather data is less useful, as a result of global climate change. Last fall, the International Panel on Climate Change, a UN-sponsored body made up of more than 1,500 leading climate experts from 60 countries, stated that the earth is 0.5 C warmer than it was 100 years ago, at least partially due to the emission of human-made gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

Furthermore, unless immediate and drastic steps were taken to reduce emission of these gases, the panel said, there could be a global rise in temperature as high as two degrees C in less than 50 years. Federal Agriculture Minister Ralph Goodale pointed out the significance of this apparently minor increase in his speech at an Agricultural Forum on Climate Change in Toronto recently: "During the last ice age, when this hotel site was under several kilometres of ice, the climate was only four degrees colder than it is now."

Environment Canada says Canada is already one degree C warmer than it was a century ago. Further evidence of climate change: Spring break-up on Canadian lakes is now a week earlier than it was 30 years ago, the southern boundary of permafrost has moved north by 160 kilometres, and during the past decade there have been an unusual number of weather events such as floods, droughts and extreme temperature variations.

Gordon McBean, Assistant Deputy Minister at Environment Canada, told the forum on climate that 'global warming' isn't the same thing as 'climate change.' 'Global warming' only refers to the predicted rise in global temperature. 'Climate change' is defined as changes in the average weather for a particular location, including temperature, precipitation, cloud cover and other elements.

McBean added that most climatologists believe it is likely to be warmer in Western Canada and cooler in the Atlantic provinces. Beyond that, not much is known.

Terry Daynard, member of the National Agriculture Environment Committee, one of the sponsors of the forum, said the committee doesn't have any major concerns about these changes: "Farmers can readily adapt to 1.5 C temperature increase over 50 years."

Daynard, executive vice-president of the Ontario Corn Producers Association, also said that the increased high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere help plant growth and improves water-use efficiency. As for changes in precipitation or extreme weather events, the evidence just isn't there, he said.

But the University of Guelph's Smit, who has done a number of studies over the past 10 years on the implications of climate change for agriculture, says there is some misunderstanding about the potential impact of climate change. "It's not this average temperature business that farmers will experience. They'll experience things like more frequent dry spells or longer growing seasons."

By the latter half of the next century, Ontario's average annual temperature's may range from three to eight degrees C warmer. This shifting of the mean temperature will result in a different range of seasonal weather variations, he says. "I'm not one of those who says the sky is going to fall down tomorrow. It may be that these changes open up some opportunities for Ontario farmers."

While a longer growing season would provide benefits, warmer summers will likely mean more days of crop-killing ground level ozone levels. As reported in Farm & Country (May 23, 1995), ground-level ozone or smog results in annual crop losses of $70 million a year in Ontario, with southwestern Ontario hit the hardest. Smog is produced by emissions from smoke stacks and tail pipes - half of which comes from the U.S.

Ozone, which is an oxygen molecule with an extra oxygen atom, enters plant cells and releases that extra atom, giving up heat energy which can blast a hole in a cell wall. University of Guelph bean breeder Tom Michaels reported ozone was cutting yields by 30 per cent in extreme cases.

According to a November 1995 study by Environment Canada on the impacts of climate change on Ontario, the number of days where temperature was over 30 C directly correlates with the number of days where smog exceeded acceptable air quality limits of 82 parts per billion. Under climate change, some 50 years from now in the London area, for example, where currently 10 days each year are over 30 C, there may be nearly 50 such days a year.

Another more controversial impact of climate change cited in the Ontario study is extreme weather events: more frequent "weather disasters such as severe thunderstorms, hail, tornadoes and even hurricanes."

Blenheim's Girty has also noticed more weather extremes over the past 30 years. "No doubt extremes are becoming more frequent. Records are being set at the top and the bottom ends and there has been a definite rainfall pattern change."

Girty now chooses hybrids that can handle the extremes, and uses a three-year or longer yield index to take some of the risk out of wild weather swings. And he's conservative: He'll go at least 100 units under the recommended CHUs for his area.

If farmers have survived the last 15 years, they've probably got the ability to adapt to most things climate change will throw their way, Girty says. His advice: "Keep working on your system."

"If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't trying anything new."

back

OPINION

Tax to fund the CBC would be a waste

Farmers would be wise not to take a wild leap of faith through a mythical window of opportunity and support the proposed 7.5-per-cent Communications Distribution Tax to fund the CBC's annual budget of $1.3 billion. Currently $1 billion comes from taxpayers and $300 million from advertising.

The Juneau report, along with Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, say the CBC should be funded by direct taxation rather than the supervision of elected MPs. Little has changed since former Farm & Country editor John Phillips editorialized how the CBC top brass have been an untrustworthy bunch of scoundrels in the area of farm broadcasting. Over the years, Phillips catalogued the decimation of farm broadcasting by the CBC, as then-CBC executive Margaret Lyons described it as "ghetto broadcasting". Long before it became a Reform party mantra, Phillips advocated the privatization of the CBC.

The Juneau report confirms this as CBC English TV has seen market share drop from 21 per cent in 1989 to 12 per cent in 1995. There is a consensus that CBC audience numbers will stay low and go lower.

CBC Radio has been losing market share over the years and hasn't created a major new program in 20 years.

CBC chairman Perrin Beatty, a champion of free trade and deregulation under the Tories, is faced with the key decision whether to broaden the CBC's revenue base or narrow its mandate. Predictably, the Juneau report suggests moving CBC corporate headquarters from Ottawa to Montreal. More jobs for Montreal as Bouchard drives private companies out of Quebec. Rather than taking a reality check and have the CBC emerging as a real public network, the report suggests adherence to the general audience and the needs of more specialized audiences. They really should give rural listeners more than CBC stereo devoted to classics and opera.

What can be done? Professor John Crispo thought he could improve the CBC but resigned from the board of directors in 1994, saying his eight years there were like a sentence. "The nicest thing I was called was a white man from Toronto," he said. Not much hope for change in that direction.

Today's CBC is a small operation in a global market with death star satellites honing in on Canadian eyes and ears. Nobody is going to support a CBC whose agenda has more to do with attracting funding from Ottawa for politically correct programs promoting alternative lifestyles than from the majority who pay the bills. Privatization is preferable to taxation without accountability.
Hugh Zimmer grows tobacco and corn in Oxford county.

What global warming?

Global warming is still a topic that catches attention in the press, but more journalists are recognizing that it may not be occurring; or even if it is, that the degree of warming is questionable.

Former Minister of the Environment, Sheila Copps, however, won't be swayed. She thinks global warming started forest fires last year. Minister Copps opined that "the direct cost of the fires and storms caused by global warming was $500 million" in 1995, out of a total loss of $3 billion. Nowhere did she state how much global warming took place to cause the fires. Clearly, either her staff did not provide balanced briefing notes for her or she was only listening to the die-hard environmentalists.

Ironically, Environment Canada's own science adviser on climate change, Henry Hengeveld, gave a more realistic appraisal of the climate change issue in a recent letter to the Globe and Mail. In reference to the medieval warm period (MWP) between the 9th and 14th centuries, he wrote "it is still not possible to conclude whether or not the MWP really occurred and, if so, whether average global temperatures during this event were comparable to that of recent decades." Nowhere did he indicate that global warming is occurring, stating only that there isn't sufficient information to decide whether climate changes could be attributed to natural or human causes.

Surveys have shown that urban reporters rely on government officials and environmental activist groups for over 60 per cent of their story ideas, with academics making up less than 20 per cent. This is no surprise - if we did hear from scientists, we'd realize that, among the hundreds of them working on climate studies worldwide, there is no agreement on whether or to what extent global warming is occurring.

In the recent Montreal Protocol, on usage of materials which escape into the atmosphere, participating countries said it was causing climate change, based on a United Nations computer model: Clearly, the agreement itself was more important than science. Only those researchers agreeing on the causes of global warming were invited to that meeting and others leading up to the signing of the protocol.

The UN computer model was based on several fallacies. One was that CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for 200 to 300 years. Meanwhile, another group of scientists has shown that, from historical global fossil energy use, the ocean-biosphere-atmosphere system exhibits a characteristic CO2 residence half-life of about 37 years. Also, no one knows what is happening to 43 per cent of the six or seven gigatons (1,000 million metric tons) of carbon being poured into the atmosphere each year. The Vostok Ice Core record of 160,000 years of atmospheric CO2 shows a correlation between CO2 and warming, but the question remains whether warming caused the release of CO2 or vice versa.

The most telling observation about the computer model's failure is its inability to predict the past. Twice as much warming was predicted for the past couple of hundred years than appears in the climate record. It has been stated that even the most comprehensive global climate models greatly over-simplify or misrepresent key climatic processes. The hundreds of natural variable factors cannot be quantified precisely to put into a computer.

When natural variability is so great, it is dangerous to attribute any particular change to any particular cause. Meanwhile, we continue to spend millions of dollars on a fallacy.
Keith Matthie is an apple grower from Prince Edward county.

Dishrag story more dangerous than bacteria

Warning: your kitchen dishrag is a killer. According to the front page of the Globe and Mail, "you probably handle an unimaginably dangerous collection of harmful bacteria" while going about your kitchenly chores, and "90 per cent of food-related illness in the home could be prevented by using paper towels when preparing foods, especially meats". This is truly a breakthrough finding, given there are an estimated 2.2 million cases of foodborne illness a year in Canada, at a social cost of $1.3 billion. If 90 per cent of the home-based cases could be eliminated, then people should be healthier. Prizes should be awarded.

Don't hold your breath.

The killer-dishrag story will, however, meet the primary goal of its creators: to sell more sponges. Specifically, anti-bacterial sponges manufactured by 3M Co., of Minneapolis, Minn.

Ever since the Jack-in-the-Box outbreak of hamburger disease in Seattle in January 1993, there have been a steadily increasing number of media accounts about killer bugs in the food supply.

Manufacturers have kept pace. Dial soap is now advertised as "killing more bacteria" than competitors. Clorox bleach is shown in television commercials as the only effective way to rid the kitchen countertop of salmonella. And now the anti-bacterial sponge.

Charles P. Gerba, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, was contracted by 3M to perform tests of household dishrags and sponges in five U.S. cities and compare the results to the 3M sponge. Not surprisingly, Gerba found about 100 times more bacteria in dishrags retrieved from households.

Then the public relations firm hired by 3M peddled the results, taking Gerba on tour to release the results in August 1995. Several stories appeared on the U.S. wire services.

Why the Globe decided to run the story at the end of December 1995 remains a mystery. The article makes no mention of the fact that the results have not been published in a scientific journal for scrutiny by other researchers. A month ago the PR firm promised that details were in the mail. They had not arrived at presstime.

The financial source for this research, 3M, was not disclosed in the Globe story. Industry-funded research is fine - I receive some industry money myself; and, anyway, why should taxpayers fund a study of a 3M product? But it's always a good idea to declare your sources up front.

Some may argue the end justifies the means, that any message promoting the safe handling of food in the kitchen is good - except that stories which overstate a risk have been shown to do more harm than good.

Douglas Powell pursues graduate studies in food science and is an avid media watcher.