Droughts can lead to multi-million dollar economic losses for the agriculture industry.
From 2020-2024, the economic impact of drought on agriculture in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas exceeded $23 billion.
In 2018, local communities in five southwestern Oklahoma counties were hit with about $209 million in direct output losses and another $91 million in indirect costs, said Amy Hagerman, an agricultural economist at the Oklahoma State University Extension.
"These are the losses that producers experience in terms of forage and hay production, in terms of crops that have been lost," Hagerman said. "And then we can also think about it in terms of the indirect costs, so the damages from wildfires, the additional costs that are put into infrastructure to help mitigate some of the damages of the drought."
To ease losses, there are a slew of programs focusing on everything from crop insurance to grazing losses to the cost of trucking in hay.
The Oklahoma Emergency Drought Committee voted to open $2 million in drought mitigation funding on Tuesday.
As executive director of the Oklahoma Conservation Commission, Trey Lam has a seat on the three-person Emergency Drought Committee. He said the funding is for water needs like cleaning out ponds or drilling wells.
"Trying to keep the people in business, because if you don't have water, you've either got to haul it, and that's expensive and not possible for some people, or you've got to sell your cattle," Lam said.
An additional $10 million in funding is expected to follow. Lam said he has an agreement with leadership of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and Senate for a supplemental appropriation in the next session. He's confident enough in that funding to open applications for assistance.
"We'll put a caveat in there in the application that they should go ahead and do their practice, but there's a chance they might not get paid if the legislature doesn't approve the money," Lam said. "But I would think that would only be a crisis, a huge economic downturn or something like that, that would make that happen."
Recently, the drought has prompted water conservation notices from cities. Lam said everyone is responsible for water and encourages conservation even if they are not personally affected.
A vicious cycle
Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared 61 primary counties and 16 continuous counties as a natural disaster area for drought in the state. Although temperatures have cooled down from triple-digit highs, nearly all of Oklahoma remains in some form of drought.
The current drought is comparable to the one in 2022, said Aaron Long, OSU extension specialist for the Oklahoma Mesonet.
From the beginning of the year until now, he said, the state has been abnormally hot, which puts pressure on plants and soil.
"It reduces our soil moisture. It makes the drought worse," Long said. "And then it's kind of a vicious cycle where whenever we lose the water in the soil and it becomes more dry, it's easier for the weather conditions to produce more heat."
The 60-day stretch from mid-July to mid-September this year has been the second-driest on record, including the Dust Bowl and droughts from the 1950s and 2011, according to the Oklahoma Mesonet. As the state comes off its third-warmest August, Oklahoma is on track to having its hottest September on record.
However, moisture might be on the way in coming weeks.
Because of the expected monster El Niño, weather outlooks for October through December show increased odds for above normal precipitation and equal chances for above, below and normal temperatures.
Long said it will be hard to determine if the weather event could eliminate drought. Given the lack of soil moisture in more severely impacted areas, he said, it would take a long-term weather pattern to fix it.
"But on the other hand, the El Niño is that long-term weather pattern. So, I have hope," Long said.
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