Coming soon: Drought politics

It hasn’t gotten much attention in the presidential debate so far, but the punishing drought — the worst to strike the United States in half a century — has the makings of an issue that both candidates will soon need to focus on more intently.

According to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, at the end of July, roughly two-thirds of U.S. corn, soybean and livestock production were facing severe drought conditions. The USDA has designated as many as half of the nation’s counties as natural disaster areas, with drought conditions expected to last through the fall for most of the nation.

From the quarterly publication, The Main Street Economist:

Severe drought has had a profound impact on U.S. agriculture this summer. Crops have been devastated and prices have skyrocketed. For the livestock sector, the drought has been just as devastating with steep short-term losses projected to give way to a price rebound if livestock supplies shrink next year. Although the immediate challenges of the drought are expected to disappear over time with improved weather, there are concerns about whether some producers can endure these short-term losses. Regardless of how the transition from short-term despair to long-term hope proceeds, the drought of 2012 will be forever engraved into the annals of agricultural history.

While a majority of states have been affected to some degree, the map of the drought’s severity indicates that a handful of swing states — including Colorado, Iowa, Nevada — have suffered some of the worst effects.

In 1988, the last comparable drought, extreme conditions across the Midwest emerged as a slow-burning issue in the Farm Belt, with both George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis touring parched farms and struggling to outline a farm policy to address the crisis.

Republicans hammered Dukakis for his approach — then-Sen. Bob Dole asserted that if Dukakis’s farm policies became law, it would make the drought “look like a Sunday picnic.”

Despite the Reagan administration’s relief initiatives, two especially hard-hit states, Wisconsin and Iowa, flipped and voted Democratic that year. While the drought wasn’t the sole cause for the switch, few doubted at the time that it played a role in both places.