Drought conditions are continuing to create issues for farmers throughout the central and mid-west states according to the latest data issued by climatology experts, reports Reuters.

It could be just what climate change naysayers need to be convinced of the true impact global warming is having. Newsweek is reporting in its current issue that wheat crops are facing major challenges as a result of the planet's rising temperatures.

The drought currently plaguing the nation may cost California 100 dairy farmers before the year's end, according to dairy industry experts.

Worried about the cows that are fed corn, which makes them sick? Well, no need to worry any more; some farmers are now feeding their cows candy.

The rapidly growing wine industry in the Midwestern states has so far been more of a tourist attraction than a serious contender in the arena of fine wines, but some vintners and oenophiles believe that this year's drought could produce more sophisticated wines.

Fears over what many experts suggest is an inevitable food crisis as a result of the nation's worst drought in half a century has the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization looking at making biofuel policies more flexible.

Short of any government sanctioned rain dances, efforts are underway to address the nation's severe drought epidemic with the announcement earlier this week from the Obama administration that the government will buy $170 million worth of meat, poultry and fish to help support the nation's struggling farmers.

Extreme drought conditions continue to plague the nation as the worst drought in more than half a century has now claimed more than two-thirds of the contiguous United States, with one-fifth of the regions classified as "extreme drought," according to climate experts.

But due to rising temperatures that’s exactly what could happen in Glacier National Park in Montana. Researchers originally believed glaciers would disappear in the park by 2030, but newer research predicts the end of glaciers by 2020.

Over the past 100 years, glaciers in Glacier National Park have shrunk by 67%, marking the fastest recession of any glaciated region in the continental United States; National Geographic News reports.

The 1992 forecast of 2030 was based on data collected during the 1980s, but improved research techniques and further increases in temperature have revealed a revised date of 2020.

Non-polar ice is melting all over the world and receding glaciers can cause drought. As new land is uncovered, plants will overcrowd the area and dry up streams fed by glaciers, endangering the region’s plants and animals.

Scientists say local topography may balance out climate change. In Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park drifting snow from the mountains is keeping local glaciers alive, but it’s a geographical crapshoot.

In related news, the Extreme Ice Survey is using time-lapse cameras in locations like Alaska and Iceland to take a photographic survey of glacial erosion around the world.

Warming temperatures raise sea levels, threatening islands in the Pacific, and climate change increases the spread of deadly diseases, such as avian flu, cholera, tuberculosis and yellow fever. All of which harm humans.

And now, a new study claims global warming could starve 3 billion people by 2100. The majority of the victims will come from developing countries, but the effects might stretch as far as Europe and Russia.

Published in the journal Science, researchers believe there is a 90% chance 3 billion people will go hungry by the end of the century, due to dried up farmland and higher food prices, and the tropics and subtropics will be the hardest hit, where most of the denizens rely on locally grown crops. These regions could face their highest temperatures ever.

Scientists claim areas in the Sahara, like the Sahel Belt, a semi-arid region stretching across Africa, where farming employs 60% of the population, are at increased risk for desertification and drought, forcing people to move away, which will cripple the economy, where farming supplies 40% of the gross domestic product.

Industrialized nations are also at risk. Temperature changes in Europe and Russia have already impacted local harvests. Maize yields in Italy dropped 36%, France had a 50% cut in fruit production and in the USSR grain outputs dipped 13%, disrupting global grain prices.

And farmers in China are in trouble too. Climate change is threatening their water supplies.

Via NewScientist.