Alabama Farmers Voice Concerns About Drought

About a week after all 67 Alabama counties were declared a disaster area by the U. S. Department of Agriculture, the Alabama Cooperative Extension System held a statewide video conference on July 12 to discuss the drought plaguing the state’s farmers.

Dr. Bob Goodman, an Extension economist, moderated the video conference from Auburn University as it switched to several viewing sites around the state to give farmers a chance to talk about the drought and how it is affecting their crops this season. Alabama Commissioner of Agriculture Ron Sparks attended the video conference as well as staff members for U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions.

The worst area in the state is in north Alabama, which the U.S. Drought Monitor calls an area of exceptional drought conditions, a phenomena that occurs about once every 50 to 100 years.

Thomas Kirkland, a farmer in southeast Alabama, had a good rain on April 14, but his next good rain wasn’t until June 19.

“I went two and a half months with no rainfall,” says Kirkland, who grows cotton and peanuts. “We are going to lose money any way you look at it.”

The main concern for Kirk Parker, a cattle farmer in the Wiregrass, is the lack of hay.

“We have cut absolutely no hay this season,” Parker says. “I’ve had pastures that haven’t had a cow in them since the first of April. There is no hay in southeast Alabama, and this is as bad as it has ever been in this area for cows.”

Farmers across Alabama have the same problems as the Wiregrass region –damaged pastures and grasslands as well as damaged row crops.
Thomas Dozier, an Elmore County farmer, says complete recovery is impossible.

“The thing that makes this especially damaging, coupled with the drought we had last year, is that our margins have been so narrow and completely nonexistent for the last couple of years that we have nothing to fall back on,” says Dozier. “Farming is a risky business, and it’s absolutely necessary to have substantial reserves to fall back on at a time like this.”

Richard Edgar, another Elmore County farmer, echoed Dozier’s concerns.

“The crop insurance is my concern,” says Edgar. “We have to put the inputs into this crop, even though we know it won’t have the opportunity to make a full yield.

“The other side of this is that the Farm Service Agency has chosen a bad time in our cycle to cut back on our monies as far as advances on our direct payments,” he says. “We only received 22 percent advance this year as opposed to the past year at 50 percent, and that would have gone a long way to help us over the hump of last year.”

In Autauga County, Bill Lipscomb has received about 2 inches of rain since the beginning of July, and that has helped to improve his pasture situation.

“One thing that’s going to hurt us is that this drought has caused cattle producers to either early wean or early sell,” he says. “People are selling their replacement cattle; they are not keeping any of it. The big hurdle is how we are going to carry our cows through the winter. Protein sources are going to be real tight because we usually use a lot of cotton seed to feed our cattle.”

Stanley Walker, a Black Belt farmer, says no one is going to escape the devastation of this drought. “Alabama agriculture is in extreme jeopardy. This is a 100-year drought, and much of the corn here has been destroyed.”

Robert Miller, a farmer in east Alabama, says he didn’t want to sell his cattle, so he purchased hay. Miller also farms cotton, peanuts and corn.
“The cotton is sitting at a fair stand, but I am looking to lose money on it because about a fourth of my crop came up 10 to 15 days ago,” he said in mid July. “The time factor is going to lay into it.”

Miller adds that he didn’t even plant peanuts this year. “My field was so dry and powdery. I waited until June 19, and the date had already passed on insurance for planting the peanuts so I didn’t plant them.”

He says his corn was a disaster and that there is no way for him to show a profit this year.

Lance Whitehead, who farms in Fayette and Pickens counties, says he has 800 acres of cotton and only 575 of those acres have an adequate stand. He has replanted more than 200 acres.

“The overall operating cost has substantially increased. We need financial funding fast, especially for young farmers like me. With little equity backing, we will be forced out of farming,” he says.

Farmers from the Sand Mountain region stressed the need for long-term solutions to the problem.

“Crop insurance should provide some sort of coverage,” says Jimmy Miller of Blount County. “We need some kind of coverage or a reasonable premium to cover what we’re putting out there.”

Bryan Glenn of Lawrence County has lost all three of his crops.

“This is the first time in my life that I’ve lost all three crops – wheat, soybeans and corn. I’ve had to replant 50 to 75 percent of my corn.”

FSA’s Ronnie Davis says there is a disaster program in place.

“The problem with the program is that they threw in a lot of changes that changed the way we would deliver this program.”

He says there is no set time when farmers can sign up, but he anticipates the sign-up date to be at least early October.

“By the time the software is developed and we have our office staff trained throughout the state to deliver the program, it’s going to be late September or early October,” he says.

According to Davis, quality losses will be addressed in the program, and if a farmer has a production loss, they will have an opportunity to regain a market loss on some of those crops.

Commissioner Sparks says he wants farmers to understand that everyone in Montgomery is aware of what is going on throughout Alabama.

“Most of these farmers are in the worst situation they’ve been in for a long time, and we’re trying to get some relief out there as quick as we can,” he says.

Sparks says he has met with the state insurance commissioner to try and cut through the red tape to get more adjusters into the state to start helping farmers more quickly.

“Gov. Bob Riley and I have asked the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for money from Section 32 to aid farmers.”

Section 32 money comes from the Commodity Credit Corporation, and the secretary has discretion in extraordinary situations on the use of those funds. Sparks has asked Gov. Riley for $10 million from Section 32 to pay for moving hay from surrounding regions so that farmers would not have to incur the cost of transportation.

Writer: Tess Hollis

Posted by at July 17, 2007 03:15 PM