(WASHINGTON) — Farms all over the country are bracing for the impact of drought after months of little precipitation, experts told ABC News.
More than 60% of the continental United States has been under moderate drought or worse conditions since April 7, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
The nation as a whole has experienced a dry, warm period that began in the early autumn of 2025 and has pushed into recent weeks, Brad Rippey, a U.S. Department of Agriculture meteorologist, told ABC News.
Long-term drought trends have put Midwest crops at risk
Farms in the Midwest that produce winter wheat have been especially impacted, Rippey said. The largest region that produces winter wheat — the Great Plains stretching from Montana to Texas — has been hit the hardest by drought as well as some spring freezes, Rippey added.
Up to 44% of this year’s winter wheat is rated as very poor to poor, according to the latest data from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), released on Tuesday. Nebraska is at the top of the list, with 82% of its winter wheat crop rated very poor to poor, but states like Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas are experiencing high rates of poor crop as well, according to the NASS.
While there was good moisture when the winter wheat was planted in the fall, extremely dry conditions from the beginning of March through the first half of May prevented optimal growing conditions, Brad Fuller, president of the Western Horizons Corporation and a consulting agronomist to many farms in Kansas, told ABC News.
Agriculture experts are expecting a 32% abandonment of winter wheat in the U.S. this year, according to the USDA’s Wheat Outlook. Such a high abandonment rate has only happened once since the Dust Bowl era in 1933 — in 2022 when drought conditions were at record highs, Riddey said.
The issues have also extended to the cattle industry due to poor rangeland and pasture conditions as a result of the dry conditions, Riddey said.
“A lot of the rangeland and pastures out in the middle section of the country are also in pretty rough shape heading into the key hay production season,” Riddey said.
Farmers in the Midwest are holding out hope for the spring-planted crops. But conditions were so dry in recent weeks that some growers skipped planting crops like corn or sorghum, Fuller said.
“We’ve had places in southwest Kansas that have gone well over 200 days without more than a half an inch of rain,” he said.
Farms in the West could be at risk as well
The West is facing dry, hot conditions in the near future, coming off “devastatingly” warm months in March and April, Riddey said. To exacerbate the situation, some reservoirs — especially Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest in the country — are experiencing low water levels due to the lack of snowpack during the winter.
These reservoirs are crucial for farms in the West that supply the rest of the country, Steven Fassnacht, a professor of snow hydrology at Colorado State University, told ABC News. About 75% of the nation’s lettuce and leafy greens are grown in California, according to the state’s Department of Food and Agriculture.
When there’s less surface water, farmers in California will turn to groundwater, Amanda Fencl, director of climate science for the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News. But overuse of groundwater can decrease the water quality and lower the groundwater table, causing the land above it to sink. Overuse of groundwater can also alter the soil moisture, making it drier and lower, Fassnacht said.
Lake Mead could reach a record-low level of 1,036 feet of elevation in 2026, according to the 24-month study released by the Bureau of Reclamation last week. Lake Powell is also projected to drop to a new record-low level in the coming months, surpassing the previous record of around 3,520 feet set in 2023, Cody Moser, senior hydrologist at the Colorado River Basin Forecast Center, said during a webinar on May 7. The Colorado River basin as a whole is currently sitting at 49% of storage of its historic average, Riddey said.
“There are a lot of pieces of pie for that limited Western water,” Riddey said.
Small, family-run farms would be most impacted by water shortages, Fencl said. They may be faced with having to take certain crops out of production or changing which crops they decide to harvest.
Drought conditions typically lead to lower yields and loss in profits, Fencl added.
What will climate conditions be like in the near future?
While it has been raining in the Midwest in recent days, it’s not nearly enough to make up for the dry conditions over the last eight months, Riddey said.
“It’s not going to recover from just a couple of rain events,” he said. “It will take some time.”
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Monsoon season is expected to start in early July and last through August and September. After that, the development of El Niño conditions in October will bring more drought relief into the fall, winter and spring of 2027, Riddey said.
“All indications are we should see a pretty active monsoon that could provide some relief, but we have to get between now and monsoon onset,” he said.
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