Crops blighted by disease or insects may also be harvested and used as a feedstock for anaerobic digestion.
Even those who have not lost a crop to blight are suffering financially because of it.
At Waldingfield Farm in Washington, Conn., where certified organic tomatoes are Patrick and Quincy Horan's chief crop, late blight ruined 17,000 plants in what was the final blow after weeks of rain and a hailstorm on June 26 that destroyed 6,500 early tomato plants and all the farm's midsummer staple crops.
Americans may think of the disease that destroyed Ireland's potato crops, late blight, as a European phenomenon, but its devastations actually started with them.
The Major Rogation originated as a Christian festival to supplant a pagan Roman festival, Robigalia, which consisted of a procession from Rome to a point outside the city, where a dog and a sheep were sacrificed to save the crops from blight (robigo, "wheat rust").
In tests for field resistance of potato (Solanum tuberosum L). to late blight, crop scientists rate the disease severity exclusively using visual examinations of infections on the leaves.
Rightwingers treated her as if she were actually planning to blight crops and hex her enemies, all the while claiming that they didn't believe in witchcraft.
Many farmers say that tomatoes are their most important cash crop and that the blight will be devastating.
When ecological disaster struck, thanks to a virulent crop disease called potato blight, farmers were cornered with no other option.
At a time when farms are dying off as fast as crops in a beetle blight, Offutt's companies had sales of $575 million last year.
