Iowa’s Farmers Double Blast: First The Derecho, Now A Dramatic Drought

A derecho’s hurricane-force winds slammed through about half of Chad West’s 4,500 acres of corn and soybeans Aug. 10. Now, the drought is burning up the rest of his crop, the central Iowa farmer said. West, 49, spent part of this week disking under 300 acres of corn that’s considered a complete loss.

“You put so much time, money and effort into a crop, to give up and say, ‘We’re not going to harvest this’ … it’s really disheartening,” he said, adding that he anticipates he will need to disk under another 400 flattened acres of corn, too. The ever-widening drought now encompasses three-fifths of Iowa, the U.S. Drought Monitor’s latest map showed Thursday. Nearly all of the rest of the state is considered abnormally dry, with only a few pockets of Iowa escaping both the drought and derecho.

Drought details: More than 60% of Iowa is now in some form of drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday.   Parts of 34 Iowa counties are now in severe drought, up from 29 one week ago, according to the USDA. Thirteen west-central Iowa counties remain in extreme drought, a figure unchanged over the past three weeks. Overall, 60.88% of Iowa is in some type of drought. Almost 97% of Iowa is listed as abnormally dry. -Full Report