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Western Kansas farmer says fields are like a “desert,” with concerns that it won’t improve

A Western Kansas farmer says a dire situation continues in his region as a crippling drought enters its third year.

“It’s like a desert.”

Gary Millershaski tells Brownfield he’s received 5-and-half inches of precipitation in 14 months, including a recent snowstorm. “We’re sitting on a time bomb that trust me, I love the moisture, but .40 to .60 hundredths of moisture melted in a gauge won’t even soak up.”

He says there hasn’t been any soil recharge and all of the CRP has been grazed for emergency relief, but that’s not his biggest concern. “We don’t have a major blow out like the dirty 30s when the wind got so big.  Everything was getting blowing out and people had to chisel their ground from blowing and that’s my biggest fear.”

Even with winter moisture, the latest US Drought Monitor shows 97 percent of the state is in a classification of drought, including 93 percent in extreme or exceptional drought.

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