About Drought...

The Last of the Straw:


G. went to get straw to use for bedding in the coop, and to mulch the garden.  At Miller's Feed, he shrugged shaking his head. "We're out," he said, "Completely out.  And probably aren't going to get any.  Everything is so dry farmers are switching to other crops.  She went over to Dan's Boots and Saddles.  He had 50 bales for [price was staggering--$6.99?].  He said that once it was gone he didn't expect to get any more either.  So G told him she'd take as big a load as they could cram into the back of the little decrepit Ford Ranger.  10 bales.  $75 she said later.  Then mused that we'd better start mulching with newspaper.  This has also been surfacing for dairy farmers.  We heard this dismal piece on the radio recently, about the number of dairy farmers going out of business in NM this past year.  Apparently milk prices are highly regulated by the federal government (--who? how? why?)... and feed prices have gone through the roof (--what were the figures on this?).  At the moment the report said that dairy folk were losing $3/ per 12 gallons.

And what exactly is "straw"?  Where and how is it generally grown and distributed?

So exactly what is the precipitation data?  Where would I find someone talking about this?