Kansas Landowners Look for Relief from Drought and Heat
- Dave Price
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
Daily high temperatures in Wichita may not top out cooler than the high 90s for the next week. And that follows August where the daily high temperature reached at least 90 all month. That was the first time in recorded history for the state.
Topeka could see daily highs stretching toward 100 degrees for most of the week ahead. It's a scorching early September for Kansas. The heat only magnifies a problem that's lasted much more than this month: the drought.
The U.S. Drought Monitor shows that most of southern Kansas is in a severe drought. And the nearly all the northwest corner of the state is either abnormally dry or in moderate drought. Rain has been a stranger to too many farmers and ranchers in 2026.
Why Are There Burn Bans in Kansas?
The prolonged drought raised potential danger from fires, which led to several burn bans across the state. Several neighboring states have also been dealing with drought, making this a regional concern for agricultural producers.
And there is also the quickness with which the drought has spread.
The U.S. Drought Monitor summary noted that, “Flash drought conditions were occurring across a large area spanning from Texas northeastward to Oklahoma and southern Kansas, southern Missouri, Arkansas, northern Mississippi, and portions of far western Tennessee.”
In June, factors already led to a substantial drop in expected wheat harvest for 2026. The lack of moisture dried up expectations.
“The spigot just really shut off through that March and April,” Kansas Wheat Commission CEO Justin Gilpin told American Farmland Owner in June. “That crop was growing and using topsoil moisture, and then it just didn't have anything else to draw on.”
What Modernization Changes Is the USDA Pledging?
Perhaps, technology changes could help the USDA crop reports more accurate and quicker. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced the USDA's Data Modernization Plan which has four pillars:
Updating reporting systems
Enhancing acreage and yield estimates
Expanding data sharing capabilities
Protecting producer privacy.
The changes could update reporting, allow farmers and ranchers to respond to USDA survey on their cell phones, reduce the information that they have to send multiple times to the USDA, explore how data collection sources like satellite imagery can interact with other information to improve yield estimates, and better explain to farmers and ranchers why the USDA is requesting private information.
RELATED: Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota were leaders in the Western Corn Belt states over the past three decades in generating income, according to Terrain Ag Senior Analyst Matt Erickson's research publication, “How Midwest Cropland Earns Its Return.”
Erickson explained on the American Farmland Owner Podcast how his research addressed the issue of volatility in agricultural operations.
