Memphis: Mystery Crop Damage Threatens Hundreds Of Acres
June 16th, 2010Any ideas?
Via: WREG:
Something is killing crops, trees, even weeds and nobody can explain why.
Farmers are scratching their heads and some are worried their crops may be lost to the mysterious plague.
It’s happening along a large swath of land near the Shelby and Tipton county border along Herring Hill Road and elsewhere near the Mississippi River bottoms.
Tiny dots appear to have burned onto leaves of all types of plants, and they appear different depending on the plant.
On corn stalks, the dots seem to turn white in the center.
On other plants, a white dust speckles the leaves and then destroys the green life underneath.
“We found it all in the herbs, in the flowers, in the plum tree, in the weeds,” said organic farmer Toni Holt. “It’s apparently in everything.”
Holt grows organic produce that she sells at area farmers’ markets.
As she and other farmers inspect the new growth covered in the perplexing plague, they fear their entire crop may be lost.
Less than ten miles from Holt’s crops, the damage could possibly hit hundreds of acres of corn at Wilder Farms.
It appears to have hit everything in its path.
There does not seem to be anything in common with the affected plants.
The Holts raise organic crops, so they don’t spray pesticides on any of their fruits and vegetables.
The first thought among some was a new parasite or insect caused the damage, but Wilder farms sprays pesticides and the damage there is exactly the same.
Farmers first noticed the damaging dots over the weekend.
Then Holt came home to find baby birds dead in their nests.
“There are two dead birds hanging out of two different bird houses, so we’re concerned about that. We don’t know if it’s related, but it’s alarming,” said Holt. “We’ve got horses, we’re concerned about the horses on the grass. We’ve got chickens. We sell our eggs at the market.”
Farmers we spoke with are convinced something in the air caused this damage.
They’re asking the USDA and other experts to look into the problem, and so are we.
Research Credit: AR
this looks really bad.
mass irradiation, Chernobyl style?
or is it just your run of the mill ultra-toxic chemical release into the atmosphere?
oooweee.
I read somewhere that this may have been connected to a release of sulphur trioxide from a nearby chemical plant:
http://www.wreg.com/news/wrg-dupont-leak,0,6066916.story
since it affects everything it touches, it would seem to be an unreported airborne toxic chemical release, but wtf do I know….
Sulphur trioxide?
In, California, there is a large town called Richmond north of Berkeley, and across the bridge from wealthy Marin, which is one of the poorest in the state. It is an island of cheaper, high crime housing because the oil and chemical companies are located there and can have accidents requiring people to shelter in their homes, often started by a oil cracker accident, or even when someone crashes into an electric pole triggering a chemical plume. 15 yrs ago, they had a huge sulphur trioxide plume which hospitalized thousands of people, started when someone tried to steal and recycle a brass fitting on the train car where they stored oleum. http://tinyurl.com/2g7qr6x