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High and Dry

Congress's failure to act on farm bill hurts drought-stricken farmers

By Jimi Grande | Updated on October 31, 2012
There’s an old adage that if you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out; if you put the frog in lukewarm water and heat it slowly, the frog will remain still, unaware of the change until it’s too late.

We’re seeing something similar in Washington, as our nation’s farms suffer the devastating effects of this summer’s heat wave. As the temperature continued to rise, it was Congress—not the frogs—that failed to move.

The drought of 2012 is the worst this country has seen in decades, with as much as 65 percent of agricultural land in the U.S. experiencing moderate drought or worse. According to Drought Monitor, produced in partnership with the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, nearly 35 percent of the U.S. faces severe drought conditions or worse.

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