Drought...it effects us more than we think.

In my geography lab, we covered some more very pertinent information once again. This time, we talked about drought (more specifically, drought in the United States). First, we talked about the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), which is a way of determining “dryness” of an area by measuring the temperature and amount of rainfall. We found that the worst areas of the U.S. affected by drought are the Midwest, as well as the southeast. We did all fo this with Google Earth. Next, utilizing the ArcMap program, we found once again the Midwest of the U.S. was most affected by drought (see map below). This is noteworthy because most of our agriculture is grown in the Midwest and a severe amount of drought will directly affect the amount of crop yield. We do not feel the effects of this too much simply because we are a rich country (or a "More Developed Country"/"MDC"). Because our average crop yields are almost always more than we need to survive, when we experience a drought, and because of the excess in crop yields, even if there is a shortage of crops we still have more than enough to feed the population. However, as we have started to see, this will most likely affect the prices of not only crops, but also foods from livestock. Because we need to feed livestock with our crops, if there is a shortage of crops it will not only affect how many crops are available for consumption, but it will affect how much food is available to feed our livestock; this, in turn, affects how much meat is available. The bottom line is: the less food there is, the higher the prices will be because it now costs more for farmers to raise their crops and livestock.

Next, we took a quick look at the "USA Soil Survey" (see map below) which shows where "good" and "bad" soil is located in the U.S. We found, believe it or not, that the majority of the good soil (green colored on the map) lies within the Midwest (the same area I spoke of earlier). On a side note, the green colored soil on the map is known as "Mollisols" which is a soil order that is the richest within the continental United States; it produces, or it should produce, the highest yield of crops and is found mostly in the Midwest.

We then looked at soil orders and found that areas that are normally supposed to be high-yielding in crops are actually not yielding nearly as much. Looking at the map below, the areas that are darker green show low crop yields; the darker green lies directly where the mollisols soil order is.

After looking at all of the information, one can develop an understanding of how crop yields are being affected. By looking at the types of soil that lie within the U.S., as well as the PDSI, we know that over the past 100 years, there has been a continual trend of an increased amount of drought. This increased drought, because of its location (i.e. the Midwest), will decrease the amount of crop yields, which will increase the prices of foods.