JORJ!!
Doing well, but we're burning up. It was 110 here Thursday.
The following is kinda long, but you get the idea.
Drought taking its toll on crops, livestock
July 28, 2002
By MIKE CORN
Hays Daily News
This year's drought already has extracted $300 million from the state's farmers.
There's no telling how much more red ink will bleed from farm balance sheets by the time the year ends.
Throughout northwest Kansas, farmers are struggling to keep crops growing and maintain cow herds.
Crops are wilting and outright dying, and pastures throughout the area are either dead or dying as a result of the drought and the blazing temperatures that have prevailed.
Even many of the fields that are irrigated with the precious commodity that Mother Nature refuses to deliver are struggling to survive. That situation is expected to worsen as irrigators are approaching the limit of what they can use in any given year.
Farmers are doing everything they can to cope and survive.
South of Hoxie, farmer Dave Schamberger was packing corn silage Tuesday - salvaging what he could from two fields of dryland corn that were destined for an untimely death.
"We're getting what we can," he said of the decision to cut the corn about two months early. "It won't make anything" if it is allowed to mature.
"It's going to be expensive, too," he said.
Cutting the silage will end up costing about $12 an acre because of the distance the silage had to be hauled.
That's not the only costs farmers are facing.
Irrigated fields of corn near Colby are being sprayed with chemicals to halt the spread of grasshoppers, which can significantly reduce yields.
The pastures offer a stark realization of the troubles that face ranchers and cattle operators. Throughout much of northwest Kansas, pastures now are shorter than the grass at most golf courses.
In many cases, except for the occasional thistle, sagebrush or yucca plant - all basically inedible - the pastures are as flat as table tops.
Yet cattle continue to eat, nubbing the grass down to next to nothing. Some farmers continue to provide supplemental feed, while others have been feeding since the start of winter - last year.
Near Mount Sunflower in Wallace County - the highest point in the state of Kansas - school teacher and self-described "gentleman" farmer Ed Harold rented a patch of weeds in hopes of maintaining his 40-head cowherd.
"I border right up to it, and it's green," he said, hoping that it will keep his cows happy until the rains come.
But each step that the cattle took stirred up little clouds of dust; an approaching vehicle set the herd running, the dust nearly obliterating them from view.
Nearby fields of millet wait for rains. If the rains don't come soon, the crop likely will die.
Some fields of corn and milo are already too far gone. Uncut fields of wheat were not an uncommon sight, a sign that the drought has a history that goes back to last fall when that crop was planted.
"We haven't had any rain, when was it, since June, I guess," said Janis Elfris, who take care of the Sigco Sun Products elevator in Edson in Sherman County. "It's to the point it's scary.
"I think we'd even take hail. When it gets this bad, you don't care what form it comes in. I've been around here for a long time. This is bad, but I don't know what we're going to do about it."
Despite the gravity of the situation, farmers generally are maintaining a positive attitude.
Sharon Springs farmer Bill Mai even figures that a crop loss is part of the equation - even though it is an unwelcome one - when it comes to farming.
Ironically, Mai's dryland farming operation is tucked between dozens if not hundreds of center pivot irrigation systems, which are working overtime to deliver the artificial rain to crops that are beset by the drought and heat.
He continues to hold out hope that his fields of dryland corn will produce a crop, even in an area where rainfall - on average - amounts to only about 17 inches a year.
So far this year, he's received only 5.88 inches of moisture.
His corn crop is much shorter than the corn fields that are under irrigation. But he also doesn't have the costs associated with the irrigation, costs that are high enough to require nearly 200 bushels per acre just to break even.
As painful as it might be, the loss of a corn crop for Mai will be less painful for him than for his irrigating neighbors.
Mai will be able to collect on insurance for any losses he might have as a result of the drought.
But drought might not be an insurable catastrophe for farmers who irrigate.
That's the specter irrigators face, many of whom might be forced to shut down wells because the wells either are sucking air or have used up their quota of water.
Much of Kansas, especially the western part of the state, is in the middle of either a severe or extreme drought. Conditions are at their worst in the far western reaches of the state.
Even the National Weather Services says that in the western third of the state, as much as a foot of rain is needed to reach a level of normalcy.
But it's unlikely that a foot of rain will fall, given that Kansas - especially western Kansas - is now on the downhill side of its rainfall pattern.
Even if abundant rains fall, pastures will be hard pressed to grow enough to support cattle for the rest of the summer and into the fall. It would improve, however, the condition of feed crops that are needed to supplement a rapidly dwindling to non-existent supply.
Already, farmers in the region are talking about buying hay and forage supplies from farmers who have it available.
But with as much as a third of the nation consumed by drought, the costs are expected be at a premium.
There's little offer of hope for immediate improvement.
Forecasters at the National Weather Service in Goodland would like to see the weather pattern change, but there's little they can do about it.
Forecasters daily watch the advancing depth of the drought from the plate glass windows that surround the Goodland office.
Inside, computer monitors connected to the office's Doppler radar - heralded for its sensitivity - pick up signs of the blowing dust that is frequently a problem when the winds pick up speed as the heat of the day increases.
They are pinning hopes on an El Niño system that is expected to form later this fall, which could bring additional moisture to the region.
They blame the drought on a persistent high pressure system locked almost dead center over Kansas. Storm systems that normally sweep down into Kansas are diverted north by the high pressure.
Forecasters expect it ultimately will move, forced out from the Great Plains back over Utah.
But what it will take to do that and when it will happen is uncertain.
Goodland already is looking at the possibility of July being the driest on record.
Goodland has received a quarter inch of rain so far this month. The record stands at .27 of an inch.
June stood out as the second driest on record, according to meteorologist David Thede.
Yet, they continue to issue forecasts each day.
"You almost hate to put in a forecast for rain," he said, noting that all too often this year that prediction hasn't translated into moisture.
Goodland currently is about 6 inches below normal for the year.
In virtually every northwest Kansas county, the same is true.
Rainfall records are far short of what they should be, considering what normal - based on a moving 30-year average of the records - should be.
In Hays, rainfall for the year now stands at 7.05 inches, only .63 of an inch of that falling in July.
Normal can be measured two different ways. Either way, the current total is well below what is considered average.
In fact, Hays has received less than half the moisture it would expect to receive, based on the past 30 years worth of records maintained by the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center at the south end of Hays.
The same is true when the current rainfall is compared to the average over the last 135 years worth of records.
The research center is one of the oldest continuous weather reporting stations in the state, and as a result has a long history to compare against.
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Few people along the way are willing to talk about the financial effect the drought will have on farmers or the economy of northwest Kansas.
Kansas Farm Bureau economist Mark Nelson, a former Colby resident, already has pegged the loss - to the 2002 Kansas wheat crop alone - at $277 million "that is just not going into farmers' pockets."
The loss is based on what farmers would have produced from the land that could be harvested.
But even Nelson expects that loss to increase, both because he expects to see the abandonment rate increase and the estimated yields decrease.
Prices are increasing, but that's a two-edged sword. It's a good thing for farmers who were able to harvest a crop, he said, and a bad thing for farmers who either didn't harvest anything or put very little in the grain bin.
Those with shortfalls in the amount of wheat harvested will have to rely on government and insurance payments to survive.
Because of the way the new farm bill that was approved by Congress works, the subsidy payments - as a result of the higher prices - will be far less this year than last. Those lower payments will be across the board, with the notable exception of soybeans, which should attract near-normal subsidy payments.
Exactly how much smaller the payments will be is uncertain because the U.S. Department of Agriculture hasn't calculated the final average price. The USDA also is hammering out details of the just-passed bill.
Likely, Nelson said, payments from the government will be significantly smaller from the farm program.
On wheat, Nelson estimates that farmers will be receiving as much as 65 cents a bushel less this year compared to a year ago.
For the hypothetical farmer with 500 acres of wheat, that will mean a reduction of $11,375.
Generally, government payments make up a significant portion of the costs involved with growing wheat and almost entirely are responsible for covering long-term costs, such as making loan payments on land or machinery.
Wheat farmers will not be alone, Nelson said. Corn farmers will be looking at subsidy payments falling by as much as 32 cents a bushel, while milo farmers will get 37 cents less than a year ago.
Soybean growers will be the only group that receives the full payments, but the heat and drought have adversely affected many fields.
"Cash flow is going to be severely impacted," Nelson said.
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Already, commodity groups within the Kansas Farm Bureau are urging some sort of drought assistance from the federal government.
Without it, there might be more troubles in store.
If land values decline, for whatever reason, bankers might have a hard time justifying the security of loans to farmers. That could dictate loan restructuring or placing a loan in a troubled category.
"I don't want to go around saying the sky is falling," Nelson said of the financial difficulties that might await farmers. "But we could have a lot of bankruptcies."
Help from the federal government is uncertain.
U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts has been talking with a consortium of senators from drought-ravaged states. But there's nothing more than rumors about a drought assistance bill coming from another senator who represents a state that isn't feeling the full effects of the drought.
The rumor, according to Sarah Ross, Roberts' press secretary, is that a drought bill is being marked up in the Senate Agriculture Committee. But because Roberts isn't on that committee, he isn't privy to any of the details.
Even though U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran, R-1st, last week doubted that anything would be coming out of Congress anytime soon, on Friday he introduced legislation that would offer drought assistance.
"I have the national drought map on my wall in Washington," Moran said in a telephone interview. "Every day, I probably receive a half-dozen e-mails and letters from farmers outlining the straits they are in.
"The drought issue is at the core of western Kansas."
Moran said he is meeting at least twice a week with representatives from South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado.
"We are working toward getting some type of drought assistance," Moran said.
Politically, he said, putting something together might be tricky.
Congress recently approved a massive farm bill. As a result, there is a perception issue, Moran said, because people think the bill "should have taken care of farmers."
But the drought and higher prices for commodities are expected to reduce the amount of subsidies paid to farmers.
"The Congressional Budget Office estimates that $2.4 billion is needed to compensate American farmers for losses they have suffered in the current drought. Funding for this drought assistance would come from resources already allocated to agriculture under the 2002 farm bill that would not otherwise be spent due to changes in market conditions," Moran said in announcing introduction of the legislation.
Even though the total cost of the farm bill stood at nearly $200 billion, only about $70 billion of that was targeted for farming. That makes it a hard sell to get more money.
But, he admits, this also is an election year.
Moran said Republicans will work to maintain a majority, while Democrats will work to pick up the majority. That might make money available to drought-ravaged areas of the county.
"I think the politics are in our favor of getting some sort of assistance," he said.
So far, the only assistance that has come down the pike has been the opening of Conservation Reserve Program acres for haying and grazing.
Farmers throughout northwest Kansas are utilizing the land, even though there's nothing green growing in most of the fields and what is there is shorter than average.
Still, it has been an option that has allowed many farmers to hang on to cow herds.
Moran said Congress also is working on a measure that would change the tax code to let farmers who are forced to sell cattle - at today's depressed prices - to average any losses they might have over a four-year period rather than the two-year period in place now.
"They would be taking significant losses over a longer period of time," he said. |
