Mega drought

Mega drought

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
How big of a deal is the current drought? We keep hearing about how this drought is a mega drought. That was USDA's chief meteorologist, Mark Brusberg. USDA's chief economist Seth Meyer recently gave an in-house presentation on how the mega drought shaping up in the West is impacting agriculture. Current short run market dynamics seem so inadequate to put in context of what's going on, quite honestly. And with that, he pointed to some of the immediate market effects. Folks are getting less irrigation water at a much higher price. Only after the last several years, it's more than doubled in price, while at the same time their allocation has been cut. We see some dynamics and things like lower Pima Cotton because that's grown in California, less short and medium grain rice grown in California, a bad spring wheat crop in a bad durum crop because of drought. Food prices are up and USDA chief economist Seth Meyer points to how he thinks drought factors into the picture. I even think about drought in the moment in a general sense for food price inflation as being one of the more minor elements. I think we've had very robust domestic demand for meat and grains. I think we've had really, really robust export demand for meat and grains. And this is just yet another layer that comes on top of this.
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