On the drive home yesterday I heard an interesting piece that tied my crop and drought posts into a neat closed loop, on the Marketplace show from American Public Media. You can read the summary here but the full radio interview is available here and is much more interesting.

In summary the rancher, Ken Lenox is a fifth generation cattle rancher in Rolla, Missouri says:

• The rain from Isaac isn’t nearly enough
• started feeding the cattle hay in August
• Normally doesn’t start doing this until January
• They’ve driven a 400-mile round trip to buy hay from western Missouri

Which endorses the significance of the drought; the fact that there is a real shortage of hay already, and that the livestock industry is in for a long dry Autumn and trouble ahead.