Voa Agriculture Report - Many US Farmers Struggle With Hot, Dry Weather

fill in the blank with one suitable word

Alabama

Belt

But

California

Department

Farmers

Plains

Some

Tennessee

The

This

additional

by

crops

degrees

driest

drought

farmers

feed

go

is

low-cost

mainly

not

of

other

planted

recover

remember

summer

the

to

too

twenty-five

is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Heat and are threatening some of America's most productive farmland.

The of Agriculture says an early summer heat wave across West has increased demand for water to save dry . But in many areas, water supplies are limited. Water also needed to fight wildfires in western states like , Nevada and Washington.

Temperatures have reached about thirty-eight Celsius recently in parts of Colorado, Montana and Wyoming. Agriculture Department says temperatures averaged several degrees above normal.

Some people in the West say they cannot a time with less rain in half a century. drought conditions have been most severe in the South.

The northern part of Alabama is described as the in about one hundred years. With grasslands damaged, many in Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee have no hay to their cows. So they have sold up to half their cattle early.

In southern Alabama and northern , farmers also suffered through a dry period last year. were hoping for a big corn crop this year sell for ethanol fuel. But the government says most their crop is in poor or very poor condition.

Experts say soybeans and cotton look better ---- but very much. Federal officials have declared all counties in a drought disaster area. That means farmers can get emergency loans. But they are asking Congress for an seventeen million dollars in aid.

Ten million would to drilling for water and regrowing pasture lands. The money would go to cattle producers to help them their losses from selling early.

But drought is not only weather problem right now for American agriculture. Recently, much rain fell for some crops in the southeastern . Heavy rain and flooding in the lowlands damaged wheat in the winter.

To the east, rains of centimeters or more in areas struck the western Gulf Mexico. The rains washed out fields and flooded lowlands.

But farmers welcomed heavy rainfall in early July from Mississippi River Delta to the southern Atlantic coastal area. have also received some welcome rains along the Corn . This area includes the Ohio Valley and parts of Upper Midwest.

Summer crops in the Midwest have been free of the drought suffered in other areas this .

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written Jerilyn Watson. I'm Steve Ember.

SCORE: