The warning signs for U.S. agriculture in 2026 are stacking up fast. From record-setting drought coverage to historically low snowpack and new research explaining why water supplies aren’t adding up, experts say the challenges facing farmers and ranchers this year aren’t just seasonal. They’re structural, compounding, and increasingly difficult to predict.
“Right now, 61 percent of the country is in drought, and that’s steadily been going up for the calendar year,” Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center, told CBS News. “We just haven’t seen too many springs where this amount of the country has been in this kind of shape.”