With a heavy drought continuing to have its way in Shelby County and across the state of Alabama, city and county officials have had to crack down on outside water usage.

County-wide watering schedules and limitations have left many people&8217;s yards and landscaping brown and wilting.

Residents continue to complain about the restrictions, saying they are unfair and destroy the attractiveness of the county in which we live.

What those residents fail to understand, however, is that there is a lot more at stake in our county right now than green grass.

Nearly 600 farmers in Shelby County are facing destruction of the majority of their crops due to the current drought and heat waves.

Recent rains have done little to ease the situation, as many of these farmers&8217; crops are already wasted.

In some cases, farmers are losing as much as 90 percent of their crops.

While many of these farmers have crop insurance, the payouts will barely pay the costs needed to maintain their farms.

We&8217;re talking about the livelihood and income of some families being wiped out in a matter of months.

Farming is not an industry where once a plant is destroyed you can just put another in the ground and move on.

Farmers will have to wait until next season before they can start building their crops up again.

In the meantime, they&8217;re losing a large amount of their income.

Let&8217;s imagine, for a second, that there is a comparison to be made between the situation Shelby County farmers face and that of the local homeowner.

Each will see a majority of their plants destroyed this summer and a lot of hard work will be wasted.

But that&8217;s where the comparisons ends.

Local residents will have a brown and ugly lawn for the remainder of the summer while farmers will have to find another way to produce income and keep their farms going strong.

We&8217;re talking about someone&8217;s livelihood and way of live versus someone&8217;s picnic area in their back yard.

Before we start complaining about the watering restrictions, let&8217;s try to remember that there are people in our community that have more at stake right now than some green grass