Original source URL: http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/29/news/drought.php Drought devastates northern U.S. plains By Monica Davey The New York Times Published: August 29, 2006 MITCHELL, South Dakota With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the northern U.S. plains, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they liken to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The drought has led to rare and desperate measures. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into "dugouts" - natural watering holes - because so many of the holes, up to 90 percent in South Dakota by one reliable estimate, have gone dry. Governor Michael Rounds of South Dakota, who has requested that 51 of the state's 66 counties be designated a U.S. federal agricultural disaster area, is seeking unusual help from his constituents: He issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain. [The Bush administration will give nearly $800 million in aid to farmers and ranchers devastated by drought, The Associated Press reported Tuesday from Washington. The news agency said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns planned to announce the aid Tuesday afternoon in South Dakota.] "It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, South Dakota, a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. "There's absolutely no grass in the pastures," Schumacher said, "and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business." Drought experts said parts of the states most severely affected - Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming - have been left in far worse shape because of recent history: several years of dry conditions, a winter with little snow and then, with moisture reserves in the soil long gone, a wave of record heat this summer. By late August, rain had fallen several times in some areas, but Bob Hall, a crops specialist at South Dakota State University, said it amounted to "a drip in a bucket." "The bottom line is that even if we got relief starting today, at this minute," Hall said, "it would take a few years economically to recover." As if earless, shriveled cornstalks were not enough, farmers and ranchers said they carried a sense that their counterparts elsewhere in the United States seemed to be doing just fine, leaving them with what feels like an invisible disaster, unnoticed by the outside world. Some farmers in such Midwestern states as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as some in the eastern sections of South Dakota and Nebraska, tell of a respectable growing season. Even here in Mitchell, about 70 miles, or 110 kilometers, west of Sioux Falls, some residents did not grasp the scope of the drought until the Corn Palace, a tourist-luring civic center wrapped in hundreds of thousands of ears of corn, announced that because there was not enough of the crop, it would not decorate this year for the 2007 season. "We don't have any record of anything like this happening before," said Mark Schilling, director of the Corn Palace, a campy, 114-year-old landmark promoted on highway billboards with endless corn puns. "But if there's not a crop, there's not a crop," he added quietly. After weeks and weeks with little rain and high temperatures, Terry Goehring, watched the mercury spike to 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) in his field in Mound City, South Dakota, one day in July. That was it. Goehring, who has farmed since 1978, sold half of his 250 head of Angus cattle. "There was no corn," he said. "There was no hay. We had nothing. And in that moment, I knew there was no choice." Climatologists with the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln said scientists deemed the weather conditions and their effects in the areas of the worst drought a once-in-50-years experience. In some cases, it has been worse than that. On July 15, a weather station in Perkins County, South Dakota, near North Dakota, recorded a temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius). That matched the highest temperature reported in the state since the start of such record-keeping, in July 1936, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the Nebraska center. Given such conditions, it is hardly a surprise that crop estimates are so gloomy. Steve Noyes, deputy director at the South Dakota field office of the U.S. National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the winter wheat crop here had shrunk by 43 percent from last year. Alfalfa hay, he said, is expected to be down by 35 percent and 22 percent of pasture land is deemed "very short," with 35 percent "short," figures significantly worse than those of a year ago. MITCHELL, South Dakota With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the northern U.S. plains, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they liken to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The drought has led to rare and desperate measures. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into "dugouts" - natural watering holes - because so many of the holes, up to 90 percent in South Dakota by one reliable estimate, have gone dry. Governor Michael Rounds of South Dakota, who has requested that 51 of the state's 66 counties be designated a U.S. federal agricultural disaster area, is seeking unusual help from his constituents: He issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain. [The Bush administration will give nearly $800 million in aid to farmers and ranchers devastated by drought, The Associated Press reported Tuesday from Washington. The news agency said Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns planned to announce the aid Tuesday afternoon in South Dakota.] "It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, South Dakota, a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. "There's absolutely no grass in the pastures," Schumacher said, "and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business." Drought experts said parts of the states most severely affected - Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming - have been left in far worse shape because of recent history: several years of dry conditions, a winter with little snow and then, with moisture reserves in the soil long gone, a wave of record heat this summer. By late August, rain had fallen several times in some areas, but Bob Hall, a crops specialist at South Dakota State University, said it amounted to "a drip in a bucket." "The bottom line is that even if we got relief starting today, at this minute," Hall said, "it would take a few years economically to recover." As if earless, shriveled cornstalks were not enough, farmers and ranchers said they carried a sense that their counterparts elsewhere in the United States seemed to be doing just fine, leaving them with what feels like an invisible disaster, unnoticed by the outside world. Some farmers in such Midwestern states as Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, as well as some in the eastern sections of South Dakota and Nebraska, tell of a respectable growing season. Even here in Mitchell, about 70 miles, or 110 kilometers, west of Sioux Falls, some residents did not grasp the scope of the drought until the Corn Palace, a tourist-luring civic center wrapped in hundreds of thousands of ears of corn, announced that because there was not enough of the crop, it would not decorate this year for the 2007 season. "We don't have any record of anything like this happening before," said Mark Schilling, director of the Corn Palace, a campy, 114-year-old landmark promoted on highway billboards with endless corn puns. "But if there's not a crop, there's not a crop," he added quietly. After weeks and weeks with little rain and high temperatures, Terry Goehring, watched the mercury spike to 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) in his field in Mound City, South Dakota, one day in July. That was it. Goehring, who has farmed since 1978, sold half of his 250 head of Angus cattle. "There was no corn," he said. "There was no hay. We had nothing. And in that moment, I knew there was no choice." Climatologists with the U.S. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln said scientists deemed the weather conditions and their effects in the areas of the worst drought a once-in-50-years experience. In some cases, it has been worse than that. On July 15, a weather station in Perkins County, South Dakota, near North Dakota, recorded a temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius). That matched the highest temperature reported in the state since the start of such record-keeping, in July 1936, said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist at the Nebraska center. Given such conditions, it is hardly a surprise that crop estimates are so gloomy. Steve Noyes, deputy director at the South Dakota field office of the U.S. National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the winter wheat crop here had shrunk by 43 percent from last year. Alfalfa hay, he said, is expected to be down by 35 percent and 22 percent of pasture land is deemed "very short," with 35 percent "short," figures significantly worse than those of a year ago. -- -------------------------------------------------------- Escaping the Matrix website http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website http://cyberjournal.org subscribe cyberjournal list mailto:•••@••.••• Posting archives http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Blogs: cyberjournal forum http://cyberjournal-rkm.blogspot.com/ Achieving real democracy http://harmonization.blogspot.com/ for readers of ETM http://matrixreaders.blogspot.com/ Community Empowerment http://empowermentinitiatives.blogspot.com/ Blogger made easy http://quaylargo.com/help/ezblogger.html
