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(Reuters) - Texas agriculture producers lost $7.62 billion to the state's 2011 drought, which experts said makes it the costliest drought in the state's history and possibly the most expensive drought ever suffered by any state.
"No one alive has seen single-year drought damage to this extent," said Travis Miller, an agricultural economist at Texas A&M University.
The loss figures of $7.62 billion do not include losses in the state's lucrative commercial timber industry.
"The commercial timber forested area of East Texas was among the hardest hit," said Burl Carroway of the Texas Forest Service, adding that an estimated $558 million of standing trees that could have been sold for timber, succumbed to the drought.
The thing is, we are in a drought cycle currently, which NOAA states will not really be over until 2020.