How the Drought of 2012 Will Make Your Food More Expensive

They call drought the sl0w-motion disaster, and for good reason. While earthquakes and volcanoes strike in a moment, and hurricanes unfold over a few days, a drought is simply a day without rain that becomes two days without rain…and then a week…and then a month and then longer. The damage worsens by the hour, but it can take weeks or even months before the effects of drought become visible in cracked soil, stunted crops and dried up lakes. Even then, there’s none of the explosive drama that marks other natural disasters. Instead, there are days of sun and heat, a steady drying of the landscape, as if the all the water in the air and the soil were simply being sucked away. So while the drought of 2012 may not have generated the iconic images of Hurricane Katrina or Haiti earthquake, remember that was is happening right now to the heartland of the U.S. truly is historic. The National Climatic Data Center reports that 55% of the country is now in moderate to extreme drought, making this the biggest dry spell since 1956, and it already rivals some years from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. See full Article.