According to an AP wire story : Western Kansas Farmers Culling Cattle Herds, Abandoning Wheat AcresBy Roxana Hegeman Associated Press Writer Published: May 13, 2002SYRACUSE, Kan. (AP) -
The (winter wheat) plants should be knee-high and so thick he can't see the ground. But these barely outstrip the top of his dusty boots as he strides through the sickly stand. Large brown patches of dirt show where plants died and blew away, or seed never sprouted at all....As Keller waits, he scratches a long furrow in the loose soil with his boot before hitting hardpan. Keller unsheathes a pair of pliers and inserts the handle in a half-inch fissure, prying loose clods of dirt as hard as rock. Farther down the field, he stops and easily pulls out a wheat plant with two fingers. Then another. And another. In far western Kansas, where no substantial rain has fallen since August, dry conditions are approaching Dust Bowl levels. The region is so parched that even some irrigated fields have been lost. The drought is affecting cattlemen, too, as pastures become so dry that they can't turn their livestock out. At the local auction yard, owner Steve Schneider is having a busy day with his dairy cattle auction and bracing for a beef auction the next day expected to be busier than normal. The number of cattle running through his sales rings are up 20 to 30 percent over a year ago. "Some are liquidating their herds, some are culling a few and trying to hold on," he says. "But the dry feed is running out."


A note of my own : In Western Canada the situation is just as bad. The River running through my city consists of mud islands with water puddles, and the fields are parched and yellowish brown. The low river conditions were caused by a winter drought in the Rockies. I watched over the weekend as some men walked through a field with clouds of dust being raised by each footfall...



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Previous pages on the same subject ...

From the prophecy page ... The drought began in the mountains and then began spreading and also Summer is past, harvest is over, and we are not saved, A report from last summer

See the page Dustbowl - Dirty 30s revisited as well as the page with a couple of snap shots of one of these dust storms. A long list of links to drought resources is on the Drought Watch page

Also see the page Earthquake Watch ...