Champaign County farmers experiencing severe drought

CHAMPAIGN, ILL. (WAND) - "You can remember those 90, 100 degree days that we had. Really humid, almost takes your breath away when you go outside, and that's created some stress on the crops this year. You can see that on the drought monitor," said Spencer Smith, professional farm manager at Hertz.

The drought monitor reports extreme temperatures has left 68% of Champaign County in severe drought and 99% in moderate drought, but it only seems to heavily affect one area.

"It's kind of interesting that such a small area is seeing those drought conditions versus what many would consider its dry all over. It's really not according to the data that's out there," said Brad Uken, Manager at the Champaign County Farm Bureau.

The data shows Champaign County is the only county in Illinois to be considered in severe drought. Professor Scott Irwin says Champaign County is one of the best corn and soybean counties in the United States, but with high temperatures ahead, he says farmers are worried.

" The potential yields for corn and soy beans here in Champaign County. That's the big thing that's on the minds of all farmers," said professor Scott Irwin.

If the drought continues, a crop shortage would eventually affect other things in our everyday lives.

"That's going to affect at the end of the day as we move down the supply chain and the block chain if you will. On how those products get to market that's affected just like we with fuel prices. Corn goes into a lot of things that we use, a lot of products in the United States. It goes into animal feed production, so the cost of meat that's on the shelf at the store, eggs those types of things," said Spencer Smith.

Farmers say the rain we're expecting is great, but it won't save them from the drought. "This rain will help but I don't think it's gonna pull us out of the drought like conditions," said Smith.