Items Tagged with 'drought'

Year after year of drought and intense heat that have cooked crops in Texas also have fueled a clash between USDA and the crop insurance industry that has spilled over into discussions of a new farm bill.

Dry weather has helped speed Midwestern and Southern farmers through most of this fall’s corn and soybean harvest while also limiting the amount of grain they could send down the Mississippi River. As many park their combines for the year, they are hoping rain storms can replenish soils parched and waterways shrunk by months of drought.

The Agriculture Department is launching a $400 million effort with 18 irrigation districts to pay Western farmers to cut back on water use, so long as they promise to keep farming.

Farmers who bought crop insurance in 2022 will receive dramatically less in disaster aid than they have in recent years because of a “progressive factoring methodology” USDA made to the Emergency Relief Program for last year’s losses, according to an analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation.