Much of the rest of Nebraska's land base is native pasture or rangeland. Tom Drudik is a Hall County Extension educator in agriculture. Each year, Nebraska farmers plant crops on about 19 million acres of land. Of this total, 8.1 million acres are irrigated. Much of the rest of Nebraska's land base is native pasture or rangeland.
Droughts have at least two direct impacts on farmers and ranchers.
First, for non-irrigated crops and grazing land, production falls. The greater the moisture shortfall, the more production drops. Except for harvesting, all production costs have been committed by early summer. Droughts also push up production costs for irrigators. This year, many irrigators have been forced to begin watering crops in early June, far ahead of the traditional starting time of about July Fourth.