Ag director sees drought at its worst here

“This area is a lot worse than other areas we’ve visited,” Peter Hofherr, Missouri director of agriculture, said Wednesday during a tour of several counties in northwest Missouri. Mr. Hofherr and Rep. Jim Whorton, Trenton, visited with about a dozen area farmers during a stop at the Bill Landes farm, north of Jamesport.

Weeks of dry weather and prolonged triple digit heat have devastated row crops for local farmers and dried up ponds for livestock. Besides the last two years of low rainfall, the year before was too wet to plant for many area farmers, making it three bad years in a row.

This year’s drought had been localized, with the northwest area of the state among the worst hit. In August, Gov. Bob Holden asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to assess drought conditions in 36 counties for federal disaster aid.

Lately the drought has expanded beyond the northwestern and west-central counties. Mr. Hofherr said he would ask the Farm Service Agency to review drought conditions in the rest of the state for possible declaration as an agricultural disaster area.

“I’ve seen cracks in fields you could loose your kid in,” Mr. Hofherr told the local farmers who’d gathered. He said short term concerns included access to water for livestock operations where ponds and streams had dried up.

Jim Weldon and his son, Chuck, farm south of Gallatin. Mr. Weldon said he is on rural water, which has been holding up and they have a backup well.

“Chuck has hog barns and the pond was getting pretty low, but the rain filled it up so it’s in good shape. We don’t have cattle. We’re among the lucky ones there. A lot of guys are getting hit both ways, row crop and cattle. They’re taking a double dip.”

Some of the farmers at the meeting commented that their pastures were dead and they’d been feeding hay. Others said they’d been moving cattle to market early due to the lack of forage.

The corn crops have little chance of recovery, and local farmers contend that even good rains won’t help their soybeans much. They’re worried about frost by now. Some were considering baling the soybeans for hay.

Mr. Weldon said weekend rains had measured to a little over five inches in his rain gauge.

“The rain was about three weeks too late,” he said. “We’ll know more this weekend. Some of the beans will green back up and for some of the beans the fat lady has done sung. It’s not going to help the corn any.”

Rising crop insurance premiums, the cost of a combine which could about buy a small farm, and a New Farm Bill which falls woefully short of meeting farmer’s need, were other issues discussed at the meeting.

Rep. Whorton explained to the producers that disaster relief would come out of the New Farm Bill. The money was a set amount for the entire nation. For one area to get disaster money another area had to give up money somewhere.

Mr. Weldon says that’s a little like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. “When the airlines go bankrupt the government bails them out. It doesn’t come out of their aviation budget.”

It was the long term effects of the drought that worried farmers most. How does a farmer stay in business when he has no income?

The damage assessment reports of the drought could make producers eligible to apply for low-interest loans. But this was a point of contention with the area producers.

*”We don’t need cheap loans, we have no way of paying them back,” said one farmer.

Mr. Weldon says he was ready to turn his farming operation over to his son. But this year’s drought has changed all that.

“It’s gonna put me in a hole I’ll never live to see out of it,” he said. “It’s gonna be devastating by the time I get refinanced, plus operating expenses. And nobody knows what the banks are going to do. It comes with farming big, but you gotta have the acres to make any kind of money.”

Area farmers, along with the small town communities who revolve around them, may find themselves in for a long dry spell even after the drought has broken.

“Some guys are going to go down,” Mr. Weldon said. “We get hit first and there’s going to be a severe trickle down affect.”