8-15 IAN FSA Drought

 Farm Service Agency bigwigs take a closer look at the drought.

 It seems like everywhere you look these days in agriculture, talk of the drought is a 1st and foremost concern. As an example, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently highlighted that USDA will utilize nearly $16 million in financial and technical assistance to immediately help crop and livestock producers in 19 states cope with the adverse impacts of the historic drought. Well the USDA’s Farm Service Agency is sending one of their top administrators around the country. Juan Garcia Is a top-level administrator and he recently came through Idaho to take a look at conditions. “As far as the drought situation, Idaho seems to have been spared. Now I am not saying there aren’t some dry spots by compared to other parts of the nation it is in great shape. The Midwest area and the corn producing areas of the nation for most of the corn that is being produced and soybean areas, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, Indiana, the drought has really affected them. They were expecting 88,000,000 acres of corn being harvested in the United States and the yield predictions have dropped down to about 146 bushels per acre. That is slightly lower than the average yield in 2011. So we will see what it does to the price of corn and price of soybeans and how that is going to affect the feed prices for the dairy industry for confined dairy operations, so we will just have to wait and see.