Historic US drought deepens 4 August 2012 The National Drought
Mitigation Center on Thursday rated more than a fifth of the
contiguous United States as in “extreme” or “exceptional”
drought. The dry spell, coupled with the hottest year on record,
threatens widespread crop failures in the world’s largest
agricultural producer. Nearly 40 million acres of corn are
withering in the most severe drought in more than half a
century. Nearly 9 out of every 10 acres of corn are under
drought. In the span of last week, the size of the most severely
drought-stricken region jumped by more than 30 million acres.
The US Department of Agriculture last week added 218 counties to
its list of disaster areas, now encompassing 1,584 counties in
32 states. The USDA has compared the disaster to the drought of
1988, when the rural small farm economy all but collapsed. In
terms of geographic scale, the drought is on par with 1934, one
of the worst years of the Dust Bowl. Data from the National
Weather Service indicate that July rainf