LANE COUNTY, Kan. — This time of year, the wheat growing in this part of western Kansas should be thigh-high and lush green.
But as a months-long drought continues to parch the region, many fields tell a different story.
“There’s nothing out there. It’s dead,” farmer Vance Ehmke said, surveying a wheat field near his land in Lane County. “It’s just ankle-high straw.”
Across western Kansas, many fields planted with wheat months ago now look like barren wastelands. The gaping spaces between rows of brown, shriveled plants reveal hardened dirt that’s scarred with deep cracks from baking in the sun.
Of all the years for drought to hit western Kansas wheat farmers, it couldn’t have come at a worse time.