Word: scottsbluff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Roberts used to think the droughts of the Great Depression were the benchmark for tough times. Now he and other old-timers in Scottsbluff, Neb., a small farming community near the Wyoming border, are talking about the scant 2.16 in. of rain that has fallen this year--30% less than what fell during the worst of the 1930s drought years and more than 80% below normal. When it comes to water, local farmers are living through their greatest depression...
Twenty miles southwest of Scottsbluff, Jim Wyatt, 41, who has already stripped his fields of everything but baked, brown grass, is hoping he can find enough scrub weed in neighbors' pastures to feed his cattle. Others have sold entire herds for pennies a pound. "If you can't feed them, you can't keep them," says Wyatt. Dry-land farmers, who either can't afford the expensive irrigation water or live too far out to be able to use it, are in even worse shape...