More than half the counties in the United States have been designated disaster areas and 90 percent of those designations are due to drought conditions. Officials announced on Wednesday that 218 more counties in 12 states have been given the designation, which brings the total this year to 1,584 counties, or 50.3 percent of all U.S. counties. The ongoing drought is expected to have an impact on food prices and the federal government is opening roughly 3.8 million acres of conservation land for grazing and haying.
