NYT.... Drought Spreads Pain From Florida to Arizona

[AlbertCat]

COLQUITT, Ga. — The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement.
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In Texas, where the drought is the worst, virtually no part of the state has been untouched. City dwellers and ranchers have been tormented by excessive heat and high winds. In the Southwest, wildfires are chewing through millions of acres.
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The United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency has already provided over $75 million in assistance to ranchers nationwide, with most of it going to Florida, New Mexico and Texas. An additional $62 million in crop insurance indemnities have already been provided to help other producers.
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That means grocery shoppers will feel the effects of the drought at the dinner table, where the cost of staples like meat and bread will most likely rise, said Michael J. Roberts, an associate professor of agricultural and resource economics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. “The biggest losers are consumers,” he said.
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The entire 2 page story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/us/12drought.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3
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Of course the states who need it the most elect a group who want to cut government help when it is needed most.... BY THEM!
How can Rick Perry make sense of his anti-revenue, anti-government, anti-science rhetoric and get support at a time like this? His state is the worst off, and is getting huge help from that nasty government he hates so much (but wants to run). Well, it may take a dust bowl to get the uselessness of the GOP position to sink in the apparently dense brains in the South and Heartland. It may take such a horrible event that we all have to suffer to get a new New Deal...and one that's better than before. I hope not.

[pennylane100]

1. Maybe Perry could mention it in his prayer day.