Heat waves this summer have brought droughts to large swaths of the United States, and they are spelling disaster for many farmers. Coupled with the lingering problems from last year’s dry winter, some farmers say their livelihood in the fields is literally and figuratively drying up.

Why is this particular drought so bad?
This year has been worse than usual due to a confluence of factors, including the arrival of El Niño. The ocean-warming weather pattern “can contribute to severe droughts” which often “disrupt growing seasons in key breadbaskets of the world,” including parts of the United States, said Mother Jones. Some experts believe this El Niño could be the strongest so far this century, making it an especially dry season.

The extreme heat in many American areas is also contributing, leading to drought patterns that are “intensifying across several key farming regions while corn and soybean crops enter critical reproductive stages,” according to the USDA. Farmers are also still recovering from an unusually dry winter, which was an “extraordinarily dry one in the Western part of the country,” said PBS News. 

This has all added up to an extremely difficult season. Additionally, the drought along the Colorado River system in Arizona is “pitting farmers against residents of cities and suburbs as well as industrial users including data centers, solar projects and semiconductor plants,” said Reuters.

How are farmers being affected?
Many could be “feeling the impacts of the ongoing drought and extreme heat this summer both in the short-term and long-term future,” said WRAL-TV Raleigh. Some customers have had to cut back on buying plants because of water restrictions, which have also “led to some smaller crops” this summer. “We just have enough water to grow what we normally grow. We didn’t expand any more this year,” farmer John Harmuth said to WRAL-TV.

Many are turning to state governments for solutions. In Arizona, farmers are fighting with “housing developers and solar companies” who are “buying up agricultural land,” said Reuters. They are urging Arizona politicians to “impose a moratorium on residential growth, arguing that farmers are critical to the country's food security.” Innovations such as “cross-country water pipelines similar to those for oil” could also help, said farmer Jace Miller to the outlet. Companies “can't just keep taking water from agriculture.”

Spring forward, fall back — that old rule of thumb for resetting clocks at the start and end of daylight saving time may soon be a relic of the past, as the House of Representatives last week overwhelmingly supported a bill to make the time change permanent. And President Donald Trump has expressed his support. After all, people like later sunlight hours. But keeping the clock on summer hours could have negative ramifications.

‘Hidden consequences’
Americans are “tired of the biannual time change,” and making daylight saving time permanent is a “commonsense reform that will improve everyday life for millions,” bill sponsor Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) said in a statement, per The Hill. But there would be “hidden consequences” to year-round daylight saving, said Axios. Under the reset, the sun “won't rise until 8 a.m. or 9 a.m. in the winter,” leaving “millions of children” and commuters to start their days “in the dark.”

There would probably be health consequences also. Morning sunlight is “key to maintaining our circadian rhythms” and “overall health,” said The Washington Post. “Circadian misalignment” can cause lost sleep, which in turn is connected to “obesity, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders” and other health challenges. Americans would be “misaligned all year long,” said Beth Malow, of Vanderbilt University, to the outlet.

The change would disrupt the daily prayer practices of Orthodox Jews, said NPR. Some prayers can “only be said communally” and are often performed “every morning before heading out for work or school.” Some Muslim “prayers and religious observances” would also be affected, said Axios.

Airlines “could take up to two years” to adjust their “complex scheduling” to permanent daylight saving, said CBS News. Trucking and railroad companies that are “also timetable dependent” would face challenges as well.

A healthier alternative
Congress authorized permanent daylight saving in 1973 to save energy during the oil crisis. The project was “abandoned prematurely” amid concerns about “children and criticisms from the construction and agricultural industries,” said The Independent.

Permanent standard time might be a healthier alternative, said Yahoo News. Stanford University researchers determined that sticking to the regular clock all year would result in “300,000 fewer strokes and 2.6 million fewer people with obesity.” People need “more morning light and less evening light” to have a balanced day, said Jamie Zeitzer, of Stanford University, to the outlet.

A man eats while a rhesus macaque looks on with interest in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The monkeys are a common sight across much of the country, partly thanks to their protected species status.
Monirul Alam / EPA / Shutterstock

Interest in majoring in history may have declined over the course of the 21st century, but the field remains a powerful engine for streaming television content. Even in a landscape full of painstakingly rendered period dramas, these superb series stand out from the historical crowd.

‘Roots’ (1977)
The groundbreaking series, which spans generations, tells the story of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton), seized from what’s now the Gambia by slave trader Captain Davies (Edward Asner) in 1767 and then sold to the family of John Reynolds (Lorne Greene) in colonial Maryland. Unsparing in its depiction of slavery’s bottomless brutality and shocking cruelty, the series is the “most important scripted program in broadcast network history,” said Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture. (Prime Video)

‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1995)
One of the most frequently adapted works of literature, Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, “Pride and Prejudice,” shines as never before or since in director Simon Langton’s celebrated six-part limited series. The BBC’s masterpiece is a “rare instance in which the screen adaptation of a novel serves as an equally worthy companion piece to the written source material,” said Tanya Pai at Vox. (Peacock)

‘Pachinko’ (2022-24)
Apple TV+ can be frustrating with its disinterest in marketing some of its most lush productions, and none more so than the gorgeous “Pachinko,” a multilingual historical epic set in Korea and Japan. The show “ranks among the finest original series Apple has produced,” one whose plot mechanics “illustrate the cyclical nature of generational trauma,” said Alison Herman at Variety. (Apple TV+)