Numerous States Feeling Affect of Drought

 Last class, Dr. Hupy asked the class to raise their hand if they had heard of the horrible drought occurring in Oklahoma. A few raised their hands, but the majority had no idea what he was talking about, including me. I had already planned to read up on it, but also chose a book for my book review about the Dust Bowl in an attempt to learn a little bit more about one of the largest environmental hazards the United States has ever seen. What I learned about the current drought, affecting more than a few states, was pretty interesting. My family also owns a farm, mainly for hunting, but that grows corn and soybeans. I was surprised to read Wisconsin as on the of the states listed in the article being affected by the drought. I suppose it was just me not really thinking about it considering we haven't had rain here in a very long time, but it still made me a little more interested when I read my state as one that was a part of this drought. While the cause of the wildfire that I've talked about in my previous blogs is linked to humans, a drought is something we have little control over. We don't have the ability to make it rain, and the only thing we can really do in response is wait it out for that rain to come. The article listed the states affected: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. That's a lot of states. It also discussed how prices and overall crop yields were being affected on the crops. Something that I found very interesting was that the USDA still was expecting record yields for corn and the third largest yield of soybeans ever. I would never associate drought with record crop yields, but I'm also not about to question the USDA. The drought overall is considered severe, and obviously thousands of farmers are being affected. However, with high yields I would not expect prices to go up too much for consumers on the crops being affected. Overall, it was interesting to read about something that I didn't even know was occurring until a couple days ago.

http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20130913/BIZ/309130005/Drought-worsens-Midwest-South-crops-taking-hitile