Cattle, crop losses mount in Texas drought

By Ed Stoddard DALLAS (Reuters) – A vast swathe of Texas remains in the grip of a scorching drought, which has cost billions of dollars and is cleaving America’s largest beef cattle herd. One county has seen its entire cotton harvest wiped out and losses for cattle, crops and the state’s fast growing game farming industry are seen mounting with no relief in sight. Texas is second only to California in U.S. farm production and the sector’s sales for the state topped $21 billion in 2007. The drought-stricken area straddles the central Texas hill country, near the capitol Austin, and stretches south through San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley on the U.S./Mexico border, which is a key citrus and cattle region. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor here, much of this area is experiencing exceptional drought conditions. That is the worst possible ranking and it is the only part of the country that currently falls into this category. Other areas of south/central Texas are suffering extreme conditions. In most of the affected counties the rains began to taper off sharply around September of 2007. In at least nine counties, the drought is the worst on record. … Texas AgriLife Extension Service, which is linked to Texas A&M University, said in July that it estimated that the losses to Texas agriculture since November of 2008 amount to $3.6 billion and counting. Almost a $1 billion of those losses were in livestock with the remainder in crops. “If it doesn’t rain soon, we expect this year to eclipse 2006, when we estimate drought losses were $4.1 billion,” David Anderson, a professor at Texas AgriLife, told Reuters. … “For the first time in over a century … drought has claimed the entire cotton production of Kleberg County,” Texas AgriLife said last week.