Drought conditions continue throughout the state, with slight improvement in some areas thanks to 3 inches of rainfall in the past week.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 81 percent of Indiana is ‘abnormally dry,’ 43 percent is under a ‘moderate drought’ and 19 percent is in a ‘severe drought.’
Dan Quinn, an assistant professor of agronomy and extension corn specialist at Purdue, said that unless farmers have irrigation systems throughout their fields, there isn’t much to be done but wait and hope for rainier days.
“It's just paying attention to where the drought conditions are, you know what stage that crop is at that point in time to try and get an estimate of how much that crop is impacting it,” he said. “There isn't really much they can do when the drought conditions really set in.”
The U.S. drought monitor measures levels of drought from a category D0 ‘abnormally dry’ through D4 ‘exceptional drought,’ with the highest level in the state currently at a D2.
If draught continues, farmers will begin to see impacts in the yields of their crops. In the past at a D3 level drought, corn became a total loss and was cut for feed.
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