Punxsutawney Phil, did not see his shadow on Groundhog Day this year, which would predict an early Spring. Recent studies however, would show that the notorious groundhog has only predicted the weather patterns correctly 40 percent of the time over the last ten years.
Many would say that this is due to the changing of the climate, and the warming of temperatures. If Phil had predicted an early spring every year out of the ten, he would have had an 80 percent accuracy.
Climate scientists are attributing this to the change in the climate. While we can say that the climate is always changing, some scientists are now becoming alarmists, stating that the global temperature is going to be substantially higher because the CO2 in the air is keeping the warm air down here on Earth.
I spoke with a local farmer of all things berry here in Bulloch County who does not wish to be named, who says that he is not a believer in so-called ‘man made climate change’ “The climate is changing, and it always has changed since the beginning of time.” He said. The Farmer also added that when we are claiming that we are the cause of this, we are in a way ‘playing God’ and that is not something that we should be doing.
This local farmer has reported that he has not had a blueberry crop in the last four years, due to an early March freeze that caused these berries to freeze over. There is a certain amount of Chill time that blueberries need to have, but this was last minute ‘hard’ freezes to the Statesboro area.
I spoke with a farmer named Gerald Keller who operates a farm that produces soil for crops, he runs a test farm. He says that it is all about the Brix number, and all that means is the amount of sugar that is found in the soil. If there is a lot of sugar that is found in the soil, he says that there is a greater likelihood that the crops will not freeze over during the late winter early spring freezes.
Keller stated that he sold a man some of his soil that he makes, and he reported back to him that he had over seventy bushels more than his neighbors did just because he used the soil with more sugar in it.
This sugar process also helps to keep the bugs away as well.
He further stated that he now believes that climate change is real, based on the data that he has seen, and collected that he believes that climate change is a legitimate issue that needs to be addressed, and he thinks that The way it can be addressed is by the soil.
So we see that farmers do have differing opinions, and beliefs on if man made climate change is the cause of these issues or not. Each farmer also has his own beliefs on how/if we can change it.
