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August 31, 2006
| More On US Drought | Environment |
A follow-up on the US drought, this time from the NYT:
With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the Plains States, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930's.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 them (up to 90 percent in South Dakota, by one reliable estimate) have gone dry.
Gov. Michael Rounds of South Dakota, who has requested that 51 of the state's 66 counties be designated a federal agricultural disaster area, recently sought unusual help from his constituents: he issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain.
"It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, S.D., 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, 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 say 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. [...]
"The bottom line is that even if we got relief starting today, at this minute," Dr. Hall said, "it would take a few years economically to recover." [...]
Even here in Mitchell, about 70 miles west of Sioux Falls, some residents did not grasp the scope of the drought until the Corn Palace, this city's tourist-luring castlelike civic center wrapped in hundreds of thousands of ears of corn, announced that because there was not enough of the crop, it would not redecorate this year for the 2007 season.
"We don't have any record of anything like this happening before," said Mark Schilling, the 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," Mr. Schilling said quietly.
After weeks and weeks with little rain and high temperatures, one farmer, Terry Goehring, watched the mercury spike to 118 degrees in his Mound City, S.D., field one day in July. That was it. Mr. Goehring, who has farmed since 1978, sold half 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." [Emphasis added]
It's impossible to say whether this particular drought, as severe as it is, is a consequence of global warming, but it is, in any case, a preview of what's in store.
Posted by Jonathan at August 31, 2006 11:59 AM
