Bad drought for U.S.

Press, 21 October 1983, Page 26

Bad drought for U.S.

By

ROBERT CHESSHYRE

in WASHINGTON

The United States has suffered its worst drought for 50 years with scorching temperatures across most of the country from midJune until mid-September. Now the nation’s farmers are counting the cost. According to the Department of Agriculture, com crops will be down 50 per cent on last year, to their lowest level since 1970. Soybeans will be down onethird. Although the main wheat crop largely escaped because it was harvested before the drought took its toll, most other crops, including peanuts, cotton and tobacco, have been severely affected.

Before the drought fanners were already suffering economically, in part at least from over-produc-tion, which this year caused the government to pay out massive incentives not to plant certain crops. Now hundreds more are expected to go broke. Among the hardest hit are those who raise livestock, for the lack of rain has scorched the grass from the pasture, and farmers are having to dig into their supplies of winter feed, which in any case would not have been sufficient to see them through to next year. They are now faced either with buying extra feedstuffs at greatly inflated prices, or sending cattle and pigs for slaughter months ahead of time. One Mid-West farmer reported paying $2OO a ton for winter feed, compared A

to $143 a ton last winter, while beef is selling for only $56.41 per 100 lbs, against $6B last spring. As a result thousands of fanners are having stock slaughtered with the temporary bonus for the consumer that meat prices should be well down during the rest of this year. However, this means there will be less breeding stock next year, creating a shortage that will eventually force prices up. Because of the length of the breeding cycle, it will be at least two years before prices stabilise again. The Agriculture Secretary, Mr John Block, himself an Illinois fanner, estimated this week that the total effect of the drought will be to increase next year’s food price index by about 2 per cent, making a total increase of about 7 per cent over this year, but others think the consequences for consumers — and the inflation rate — will be more severe.

The plight of agriculture is major news, with nightly television interviews with despondent farmers, and colourful accounts of farm hardship, viz., “David Bone, , his face filmed with the dust of a peanut field, stood in the shade of a tool shed, and squinted grimly into a

sun that has baked the moisture from his 50i1...”

Farmers are by no means popular. Many consumers resent the subsidies they get from taxpayers for overproduction, and one columnist quoted with pleasure the words written 60 years ago by H. L. Mencken: ‘‘When the going is good for the American farmer, he robs the rest of us to the extreme limit of our endurance; when the going is bad, he comes bawling for help out of the public till.”

But with the threat that some herds will disappear completely and the clearly genuine misfortune of small farmers who have spent more on planting than they will get for their crops — a Georgia peanut farmer, for example, cited that he’ll get a return of $532 an acre on land that was planted at a direct cost of $577 — there is considerable sympathy for victims of this extraordinary heat wave. Not least perhaps because the rest of the population has also suffered severely. Several hundred people were killed by the record, temperatures. It was still in the mid-90s over much of the country through the first 10 days of September. Schools have been closed, water rationed, and those without air conditioning

have suffered sleepless nights in stagnant, humid air. So there is pressure on the Government to help out. There exists an emergency loan system, but it is restricted to counties where there has been an overall loss of production of more than 30 per cent, and this may not be assessed until it is too late for fanners to purchase seed for next year. So far only 80 counties (out of almost 3000) have been designated official disaster areas.

One newspaper commented: “Another 20 states with many thousands of farms lie blistered and barren. Farmers wait, bitter and frustrated, for more rain and faster action in Washington.” The rain may be coming — it poured all day on the East Coast the day after the official massive crop reductions were announced. But help from a Government facing appalling budget deficits must be less certain.

One irony is that amid all the calls for punitive action against the Soviet Union for the shooting down of the Korean jumbo jet, the controversial Soviet grain deal, entered into earlier this summer largely to placate the Mid-West farm lobby, won’t be affected. The grain the Russians have bought is wheat that was harvested in time to escape the ravages of the drought.—Copyright, London Observer Service.