Although some areas of Carroll County received welcome relief from about two months of drought, with some storms that brought in an average of one to two inches of rain in late July, there is concern about how long the reprieve might last. The forecast is for the hot and dry weather to continue in August, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
When interviewed before the rain this past week, USDA Farm Services Administration County Executive Director Guy Roden said there were areas of the county that hadn’t received a drop of rain since the end of May.
“In some of the worst hit areas, ponds are dry,” Roden said. “We’ve even got creeks and streams that are drying up. I’ve got people telling me this is as bad as anything from 2011 and 2012. I have to agree that, in some of those places, it is that bad. The difference between the second and third weeks of July was like night and day. Earlier, some of these pastures still had grass. Before the rain that started the last week of July, it was just burnt fields. They were sun-bleached brown. The ground was cracking from the dryness.”
Carroll County ranks third or fourth in the state with the number of cattle raised. Benton and Washington counties produce the most cattle, followed by Carroll, Boone and Madison counties all vying for third. The cattle industry is an important part of the local economy.
“The farmers up here do an amazing job with what they have,” Roden said. “This is not always prime cattle country. Farmers often resort to pastures on hillsides where there is only four to 12 inches of topsoil in the worst places. A year like this, you are never more than two weeks away from a drought because of the thin topsoil. It isn’t like the River Valley or the Delta where there is 18 to 26 inches of topsoil. They have really good soil conducive to row crops. This is not row crop country due to the lack of topsoil. I’m not saying those areas are not suffering, too. It has been dry and hot. But the soils make all the difference in the world.”
Quite a few local ranchers are selling off their livestock because they know they can’t make it through the winter. Roden said growers who are already feeding hay know there won’t be enough food to last through for the winter.
“We have record sales in some of the local sale barns,” Roden said. “It used to be 250 cattle sold on the days the sale barn was open. Now it is 1,200 a day. Some people are selling entire herds. The market prices are greatly affected by the number of livestock sold. The price can depend on where you ship them for sale. That has always been the case. You just have to find the right market for what you are trying to sell. But distance is an issue. Livestock in this condition from the heat and drought won’t last a long time in the trailer. You have to sell them relatively close.”
Roden is hearing reports that hay is not available even with prices more than double those of a year ago. It costs between $75 to $100 per round bail. “You can’t necessarily afford to feed like that,” he said. “Producers really have only one choice and that is to cull down very significantly by selling.”
FSA has a couple of programs that can help farmers at times like this. The Risk Management Agency, the insurance arm of USDA, can be used to insure all kinds of crops. Those who can’t get that insurance have the option of the Noninsured Assistance Program (NAP).
“One of the things we do under that fall program is insure people’s pastures and hay,” Roden said. “A lot of times there is an administrator fee, $325 per crop, but there are many ways to get it free. The fee can be waived for beginning farmers or underserved farmers, which covers many categories including minorities, women, and veterans. This program only pays at a 50 percent level. If you have to buy hay at $100 per ton, it would pay $50 per ton. They aren’t making a killing at it, but it can buy feed or hay and help them get over the hump. Usually after Nov. 15 is when we can request the NAP program.”
Another huge program, Roden said, is one where farmers control their own destiny. It is called the Livestock Forage Program and is driven by the U.S. drought monitors. Farmers, citizens, homeowners, county judges and extension agents can all go file a citizen report documenting the drought.
“It only takes two to five minutes to go and file a citizen report,” Roden said. “In order for us to make a payment under that program, we have to be in USDA Drought Monitor level D2 for at least eight weeks. We had one week of D2 in July. We still have a month and half to go. Aid can be affected by local citizens filing those reports routinely until the drought is over. If we are at D3, we only need to be in a week to make payments. Once you are in D2, it can go overnight to D3.”
On July 26, the Biden Administration launched Heat.gov, “a new website to provide the public and decision-makers with clear, timely and science-based information to understand and reduce the health risks of extreme heat,” a press release states. “Heat.gov will provide a one-stop hub on heat and health for the nation and is a priority of President Biden’s National Climate Task Force and its Interagency Working Group on Extreme Heat.”