Thomas Mott Osborne: “During the month of August, most Members of Congress will be in their districts, and the thing that those of us in the…”

“During the month of August, most Members of Congress will be in their districts, and the thing that those of us in the middle part of the country will see is what is reflected on this map which deals with the drought. We see some brown areas, some red areas. And what this represents is not just 1 year of drought, but rather, we are in the eighth year of a drought that has exceeded, in many cases, the drought of the 1930s, the Dust Bowl years. Now, you don't see clouds of dust blowing around. You don't see dust 3 or 4 inches high on window sills because of conservation practices. We no longer plow up our fields like we once did. But the drought, in most cases in this area, is actually more extreme over a longer period of time than what we saw in the most extreme drought of the last century. There are parts of Nebraska where we are now 40 inches short of moisture, and in many of these areas the total rain fall in an average year is only 15 inches, so over that period of 7 or 8 years, 40 inches of shortage is a tremendous hit to take. To make matters even worse, we have had extremely high temperatures. Normally, in the Dakotas and Nebraska you might see one or two days in the 100-degree range, 102, 103. But this summer we have had numerous days between 110, 115 degrees of temperature. And of course, these are records. So the heat and the drought compounded has led to a disastrous situation. Dry land crops are either totally wiped out at this point or barely hanging on.…”