Agriculture generates over $2.5 trillion annually for the global economy.
Each year, global agricultural efforts are beset by tens of billions of dollars in damage from hail storms.
Each year, insurance companies pay out vast sums of money to indemnify farm operators who have purchased crop hail insurance.
Frozen Fury was written to help readers more thoroughly understand climate change, the science of hail storms, and how climate change is increasing the propensity for more severe weather events including hail storms. This book is also intended to increase the reader’s understanding of the history of various agricultural crops, the stages of crop growth, and the effects of hail at various stages of crop growth.
Frozen Fury is an excellent resource for farm operators, agricultural students, and hail adjustors.
What is included?
This book begins with a unique look at Weather and Climate Change. This is followed by a discussion of cloud formation, the WBF Model and the Ludlum Model of hail formation. The question of whether hail storms can be suppressed is then examined with a focus on early efforts by General Electric in the 1940s, Russian efforts in the 1950s, and later efforts in North Dakota, Mendoza, Argentina, and Calgary, Canada.
The book then delves into seed structure, plant growth stages, and the photosynthesis process.
Next, it explores hail insurance and how the hail insurance industry awards damages in accordance with the stage of plant growth at which a hail storm occurred. A review of past academic studies involving real and simulated hailstorms is presented to show the reader how an insurance company will structure its payouts to a policy holder.
Lastly, a hail insurance policy holder must provide an accurate land description to the insurance company so an adjustor can navigate to the land parcel in question. The final chapters in this book include a brief history of land description systems, an explanation of GPS navigation technology and a look at how drone technology might one day be used to perform insurance adjusting on hail affected crops.
Malcolm Bucholtz, B.Sc., MBA, M.Sc. resides in the small farming community of Mossbank, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Table des matières
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Weather, Climate, and Change
Chapter 2- Hail
Chapter 3- Can Hail be Suppressed?
Chapter 4- Seed Growth and Plant Growth
Chapter 5- Plant Growth Stages
Chapter 6- Photosynthesis
Chapter 7- Hail Damage and Insurance Compensation
Chapter 8- Micronutrients and Hail Damage
Chapter 9- Hail Damage and Fungicides
Chapter 10- Land Locations
Chapter 11- Evidence for the Adjustor
Chapter 12- Technology and the Future
Final Remarks
Glossary
About the Author
Notes
A propos de l’auteur
Malcolm Bucholtz holds on Engineering degree from Queen’s University (Canada) and both an MBA and a M.Sc. degree from Heriot Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland). To assist in writing his M.Sc. thesis paper, Malcolm spent two summers as a hail adjustor in Saskatchewan to further his knowledge of agricultural crop growth, particularly cereal grains. Malcolm is an ardent supporter of the small batch brewing and distilling movement that has seen thousands of small breweries and distilleries open across North America. He teaches hands-on distillation courses in western Canada and is the author of Field to Flask: Fundamentals of Small Batch Distilling and The Recipe: Reviving the Lost art of Home Distilling. He is currently researching and writing a book that explores the deep science behind beer brewing. Malcolm lives in the small farming community of Mossbank, Saskatchewan. When not busy researching and writing, Malcolm devotes attention to trading the stock market using mathematical models based on the changing planetary positions in the solar system.