Agriculture

Updated with comments from McCaskill conference call.

The entire state of Missouri is now a federal agriculture disaster area.

Seventeen of the state's counties, mostly in the Bootheel, had already received that declaration. Today's announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture extends that declaration to the other 97 counties and the city of St. Louis.

Gov. Jay Nixon is traveling the state to survey damage from Missouri's hot, dry summer.

Nixon planned to meet with farmers and local officials Tuesday in Lewis County in northeast Missouri, in Atchison County in northwest Missouri and in Polk County in southwest Missouri. The governor is to be joined by the state's agriculture director.

Missouri agriculture officials are using social media to share information about this summer's lack of rain, extreme heat and wildfires.

The University of Missouri Extension is encouraging people and groups to post on a Facebook page devoted to the drought. It's the latest effort to use Facebook to respond to disasters.

Facebook pages also were set up after last year's flooding and the tornados in Joplin and Branson.

Missouri’s elk population appears to be settling into their new home state, according to state conservation officials.

Dr. Joseph Millspaugh updated the Missouri Conservation Commission Friday on the state’s elk herd, which he said seems to be doing well.

“Evidence of survival rates [and] reproductive rates that are average to high, we see diet quality certainly within the range of what we would expect…the stress response:  nothing there that is indicative of a problem,” said Millspaugh.

A crop duster plane has crashed in north-central Missouri, killing the pilot.

The Columbia Daily Tribune reports that the crash occurred Friday morning in Randolph County when the small plane crashed into a corn field north of Huntsville.

Randolph County Sheriff Mark Nichols says the victim's name hasn't been released.

Nichols says a witness told deputies the small plane appeared to have clipped a tree top before crashing.