NYT: Drought ravaging Plains States compared to Dust Bowl of the 30's

[DeepModem Mom]

Blistering Drought Ravages Farmland on Plains
By MONICA DAVEY
Published: August 29, 2006

MITCHELL, S.D. — With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the Plains States, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s.

The drought has led to rare and desperate measures. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into “dugouts” — natural watering holes — because so many of them (up to 90 percent in South Dakota, by one reliable estimate) have gone dry....

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“It’s a grim situation,” said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, S.D., a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. “There’s absolutely no grass in the pastures, and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business.”

Drought experts say parts of the states most severely affected — Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming — have been left in far worse shape because of recent history: several years of dry conditions, a winter with little snow and then, with moisture reserves in the soil long gone, a wave of record heat this summer....On July 15, a weather station in Perkins County, S.D., near North Dakota, recorded a temperature of 120 degrees. That matched the highest ever reported in the state since the start of such record-keeping in July 1936, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the Nebraska center....

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Given such conditions, it is hardly a surprise that crop estimates are so gloomy....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/29/us/29drought.html?hp&ex=1156824000&en=6b987c6013ba04bb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[rodeodance]

1. 39 counties to get drought help in WISconsin

http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=96446&ntpid=6

39 counties to get drought help
Associated Press

Federal agriculture officials declared 39 Wisconsin counties that have been suffering from drought conditions disaster areas Friday.

U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns sent a letter to Gov. Jim Doyle saying the agency has reviewed reports of losses caused by drought beginning on April 1.

The agency declared Adams, Ashland, Barron, Bayfield, Burnett, Chippewa, Clark, Columbia, Douglas, Dunn, Eau Claire, Forest, Green Lake, Iron, Juneau, Langlade, Lincoln, Marathon, Marquette and Menominee disaster areas.

The others declared disaster areas were Oconto, Oneida, Pepin, Pierce, Polk, Portage, Price, Rusk, Sauk, Sawyer, Shawano, St. Croix, Taylor, Vilas, Washburn, Waupaca, Waushara, Winnebago and Wood counties.

The disaster-area designation makes farmers in those counties eligible for low-interest emergency loans from the federal government.

Published: August 26, 2006

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. related - see this thread in Environmental/Energy Forum

posted by Pooka Fey
2 years to areas of major N. American vegetation die-off & desertification
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x65768

[DeepModem Mom]

3. That article deserves its place on the Greatest Page -- thanks, Viva! nt