Drought wheat and economy

Drought wheat and economy

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
University of Idaho agricultural economist Garth Taylor talking about a wheat field west of Moscow that looked very very green, but it was only a few inches high which is way below normal. Noting that we were in the middle of a very bad drought which could seriously impact the state of Idaho's economy, I asked him what kind of numbers he came up with with the drought in mind. This is a poor picture to take in the background here, because look at that beautiful wheat field, it might have been a little bit bigger than this, though, but that's a beautiful wheat field. It's a poor representation. But you can see a very burned out areas here on the pollution that we just haven't had the rain here to bring up at a very critical time for grain development. But around the state, we've got some very bad places, far worse than here. In the Lewiston area. We're not going to get much of a grain harvest out of this this year. It's just too late for a lot of the maturing wheat. But that's still not as bad as affecting other parts of the state. Drought or no drought, TAYLOR says we could have a good agricultural year in Idaho. One of the things I want to bring out, we've talked about this when we talk about drought, we're talking about an effect upon agriculture in the state. There's always a little bit of a paradox in this, a little bit of droughts, always kind of good for some farmers in particular, like potato farmers, the reduction in the quantity of produce is far offset by the increase in prices. That won't be the case for wheat, but it is for some of the crops that we grow here in the state of Idaho. Fingers crossed.

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