Maya Rodriguez / Eyewitness News
LABADIEVILLE, La.-- In what are normally muddy fields at this time of the year, the dry soil is more like dust in the wind at Thibodeaux Brothers Farm in Assumption Parish.
"We normally pump water off, we don't pump water on, in Louisiana," said Troy Thibodeaux, who is growing both soybean and cane on the farm. "Bottom line is, we're in a drought and it's going to be bad for everybody."
Dry and windy conditions are wreaking havoc on Thibodeaux's 650 acres of soybeans. Some of the seeds planted never developed and the ones that have are drying up.
"Right over here, the plant had came up and then after then you can see it's starting to wilt and lose moisture, so naturally, it's dying," Thibodeaux said.
It is the third driest May on record here. A map from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows nearly all of Louisiana is experiencing a drought.
It has been about 90 days since Thibodeaux's farm saw any form of measurable rain. He said if they don't get about two inches of rainfall soon, he'll have to declare his soybean crop a complete loss by June 15. Thibodeaux plans to replace that by planting more cane, which is a crop that he said is weathering the drought a little better.
The dry conditions, though, could end up costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is no irrigation system because it is something not usually needed here.
"Farmers generally do certain things at certain times of the year and you bank on Mother Nature to give us the adequate rainfall that we need," Thibodeaux said.
Cattle ranchers are experiencing their own problems because of the drought. Randy Toups, president of the Cattlemen's Association of Lafourche Parish, said the lack of rain is leading to a lack of grass for his cattle to graze on.
"It's real stressful on the cow," Toups said. "The grass is not growing. And the problem is, if you don't watch your pastures, you can overgraze them and if you graze your grass too short, it won't come back as fast. It presents a lot of problems to the cattle."
Those cracks in the dry ground present another problem: some are large enough that a cow could step in one and break its leg. So, Toups moved his cattle onto another one of his pastures, which benefits from underground tidal flow.
"It's saturating the ground where at least a little grass will grow," Toups said. "The grass will hold up better in that pasture than most of my other pastures."
So far, the state's average rainfall total for this year is running ten inches below normal. In some parts of the state, it is nearly a foot and half below normal.
