Agriculture

Drought and stressful moving conditions are killing off some reintroduced elk in the Missouri Ozarks.

Officials have scheduled a series of open houses in north-central Missouri to discuss a disease that's fatal to deer.

The Missouri Department of Conservation will hold six public meetings this month in towns near areas where chronic wasting disease has been found. The events will include presentations on the disease and actions that have been taken to prevent its spread.

Corn prices surged to a new record high on Monday, as the worst drought in more than 50 years continues to plague more than half the country.

Farmers growing crops have insurance to ward off the financial failure of their season during this terrible drought. But there’s no safety net like that in place for livestock producers. And any emergency aid is tied up in Washington politics.

The rock and the hard place where Stacey McCallister now sits looks like this:

Rock: McCallister’s herd of 200 dairy cattle in south central Missouri have feed for about the next 60 days.

Governor Jay Nixon (D) says his administration is keeping tabs on river levels along the Missouri and Mississippi as drought conditions persist across the state.  He indicates that the Missouri River may be in worse shape.

“I think that the challenges on the Missouri are a little more significant than the Mississippi," Nixon said at a gathering Wednesday in Jefferson City.  "Minnesota has had a fair amount of rain in that part of the country, but we’re watching those issues very carefully.”