You might know someone who blames the weatherman for some of the harsh weather that people have experienced. Others say, “When are they ever right?” Well, more complaints are likely to surface about the weatherman’s predictions considering the delay in declaring Delaware as an agricultural “disaster area.” One caller to WGMD wanted to know why Delaware waited so long after Maryland declared. Here is Delaware Agriculture Secretary Michael Scuse’s explanation as to why that was the case.

“Maryland didn’t start the process until a couple of weeks prior to Delaware starting. The week they started, we were supposed to get significant rainfall that week. Had we got the rain that was predicted, they did not believe they would reach the economic threshold of a loss of 30% or greater to be able to request the disaster declaration. When we did not get those rains that week as predicted, then they realized that the corn crop in all probability would be lost, and that is when the request was made for the Farm Service Agency to start collecting the data.”

Should they just wait and see if the weatherman’s predictions come true? Or should they start the process right away in case? Either way farmers impacted by the drought can now receive assistance, and I am sure they are quite relieved!

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 12:42 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.