This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Aug. 13, 2012 - WASHINGTON – With hungry cattle being slaughtered or sold for lack of forage, supermarket prices rising and river levels falling, the Drought of 2012 – likely the worst since the 1950s – is having an impact on millions of Americans.
But as the harsh summer enters its final month, the response by governments and lawmakers has been mixed, with the response so far to the dire shortage of rain limited by a shortage of government funds and an overflow of partisan bickering. And many of those now suffering say there is only so much government can do to repair the drought’s damage.
“It’s just such a huge problem,” said farmer and Missouri Farm Bureau president Blake Hurst, saying many of the state’s ranchers and farmers tell him it’s the worst drought in nearly six decades, going back to the mid-1950s. “We can’t solve all the problems but we appreciate everybody’s efforts.”
In an interview, Hurst said “there’s no part of Missouri that hasn’t been affected. Livestock producers are running out of water. They have to buy hay, and some of them are being forced to sell their cow herds because they just don’t have hay or water to take care of them.”
Hurst said state and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) efforts have been helpful – including steps to ship more water to thirsty cattle and hogs, opening up restricted land for haying and grazing, and offering low-interest emergency loans to farmers.
But Hurst and many other drought-hit farmers are unhappy that Congress has been unable to get its act together an approve a long-term farm bill that would fill the gaps in disaster-aid programs – considering that the livestock producers’ program expired last year and the crop insurance system is set to expire soon.
The Farm Bureau supports both the Senate-passed five-year farm and nutrition bill and a somewhat different U.S. House Agriculture Committee-approved version. But the GOP House leadership has delayed a vote, opting instead for a controversial short-term disaster aid bill, mainly for livestock operators, that was passed last week. The Senate did not take up that short-term bill before Congress adjourned for its August recess.
While U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and others lashed out at the Senate’s Democratic leadership for not acting on the short-term bill, U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill. pointed out flaws in the temporary solution and said farmers preferred a five-year program that gave them more certainty.
“One way or another, we've got to get that done in September,'” McCaskill said Thursday. “Our farmers need certainty.”
Blunt called for swifter action, saying the drought “has taken a devastating toll on agriculture, which is a key economic driver in Missouri and nationwide. Without these critical disaster relief programs, farm families are left with very few options to make it through this drought.”
The problems are dire, especially for livestock farmers, who don’t currently have the government-backed insurance now available to corn and soybean farmers. Hurst said he had “visited with hog farmers who are facing losses and cattle farmers who will have a short calf crop next spring. Crop farmers across the state are faced with no crop at all because of this drought.”
This month, the American Farm Bureau Federation and a coalition of a dozen other major organizations representing U.S. agriculture – including the American Soybean Association and the St. Louis-based National Corn Growers Association – sent a joint letter to lawmakers urging them to agree on a long-term farm bill.
“We do not oppose passage of a disaster assistance bill, but note that almost identical provisions to retroactively extend [livestock disaster aid] programs are included in the Senate-passed farm bill and the bill reported by the House Agriculture Committee,” the letter said.
“It is imperative that we pass a comprehensive, long-term farm bill. Farmers and ranchers always face decisions that carry very serious financial ramifications, such as planting a crop, buying land or building a herd, and we need clear and confident signals from our lawmakers.”
With farm bill in limbo, administration acts
Pending a resolution on the farm bill, possibly next month, the state of Missouri and the administration of President Barack Obama have taken some action to try to get water, emergency funding and forage to drought-struck farms.
Many experts see the need for urgent action: the U.S. Drought Monitor reported Thursday that nearly 95 percent of Missouri was in “extreme” drought – including 14 percent in “exceptional” drought – and the state’s northwest corner is classified in severe drought. It is one of just a few states completely covered by those three drought categories.
More than 81 percent of Illinois was in extreme drought, the Monitor reported, including about 8.4 percent of the state in exceptional drought. On Friday, the USDA projected the nation’s corn yield will be the lowest since 1995 – raising the possibility of further increases in the price of many groceries.
At a meeting of the White House Rural Council on August 7, Obama announced an “all hands on deck” response to the “historic drought,” which he said is “having a profound impact on farmers and ranchers all across many states.” He asked USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to work with every federal agency “to make sure we are taking every single possible step to help farmers and ranchers to fight back and recover from this disaster.”
So far, the USDA has designated more than 1,500 counties in 32 states – including every Missouri county and nearly all Illinois counties – as agriculture disaster areas, giving qualified farmers access to low-interest emergency loans.
“We’ve also opened up more land for haying and grazing,” Obama said. “And we’ve worked with crop insurance companies to give farmers a short grace period on unpaid insurance premiums, since some families will be struggling to make ends meet at the end of this crop year.”
He was referring to the USDA’s actions last week to:
- Shift $14 million into the Emergency Conservation Program to help efforts to move scarce water to livestock, provide emergency forage for cattle and hogs, and start to rehabilitate farms hit hard by the drought.
- Use another $16 million to provide financial and technical assistance to immediately help crop and livestock producers in 19 states, including Missouri and Illinois, cope with the drought.
Earlier the USDA has opened most of the grassland acres in the Conservation Reserve Program for emergency haying and grazing of livestock. The 29-million-acre CRP, which pays farmers and ranchers and annual rent for taking fragile land out of production, is usually protected from livestock grazing, but the USDA will allow it during the drought.
In other drought-assistance steps, the White House ordered lower interest rates for emergency farm loans and USDA is asking crop insurance firms to give financially-struggling farmers and ranchers extra time to pay their premiums.
“The additional support President Obama announced today will help farmers in the short term and, in turn, help the businesses that rely on their crops and spending,” Durbin said in a statement Wednesday. But he added that “these actions are not a substitute for comprehensive legislation that provides much needed disaster assistance and gives farmers the certainty they need to plan for a productive, sustainable future.”
Durbin pointed out that agriculture is “the number one industry in Illinois in terms of economic impact, contributing more than $8.85 billion to the state’s economy every year. When farmers struggle, the entire state feels it.”
Across the river, the Missouri Farm Bureau’s Hurst said the bureau was “encouraged with the steps that have been taken not only by our state government, most recently in the form of funding for emergency wells, but also temporary federal programs that will help Missouri’s farmers and ranchers endure this devastating year.”
River navigation, public lands hit
Agriculture may be the most significant but is hardly the only victim of the drought.
The drought is also impacting navigation on the Missouri, Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to step up dredging, release more water from storage reservoirs, better identify dangerous low-water areas for barge tows, and inform navigators and the public about low-water problems on those rivers.
Last week, a group of 14 mostly Democratic senators – including Durbin, McCaskill and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. – urged Obama to establish an Interagency Drought Task Force to coordinate federal responses to all aspects of the drought, including river navigation, agriculture, energy, public health, public lands, emergency response and the budget.
The senators wrote that the drought “will have consequences on many sectors of the American economy, and it requires the cooperation of many parts of our government.”
In addition to the impact on farms and the destruction by Colorado and other wildfires of 3 million acres of land, the senators said the declining water levels resulting from the drought is affecting “water uses including municipal water, energy extraction, power generation, irrigation, navigation and tourism.”
The lawmakers asked Obama to direct the task force to report on the drought’s severity, its impact on sectors of the economy, the options available to address drought and recommendations for congressional action.
Political impact
One of the drought’s indirect impacts is on politics, leading to partisan bickering between Democrats and Republicans about how to pay for an emergency disaster bill and how to trim agriculture and nutrition programs in a long-term farm bill.
This week, Blunt – who voted for the Senate’s farm bill in June but also backs a temporary fix until the House acts – called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to call the Senate back to Washington to vote on the House-passed disaster package.
“The decision made by the Senate majority to leave Washington before passing much-needed disaster assistance is simply shameful and irresponsible,” Blunt said.
But Durbin argued that the House-passed bill would have paid for the short-term disaster aid to livestock producers by making cutbacks in two valuable agricultural conservation programs. He blamed House GOP leaders for failing to bring the committee-approved farm bill up for a vote, saying the House can give farmers more certainty “passing a long-term farm bill as the Senate did over a month ago.”
Meanwhile, McCaskill – who has been traveling around rural Missouri this week in a “Fighting for our Farmers” tour – has blamed the House “Tea Party” faction for blocking progress on a farm bill. Her GOP opponent, U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-Wildwood, is a member of the House tea party caucus and has opposed parts of the long-term farm bill that deal with the future of the food stamp program.
On Thursday, McCaskill told Beacon political reporter Jo Mannies that Akin “has never voted for a farm bill in his career,” in part because his congressional district was mainly in the St. Louis suburbs. Democrats also point out that Akin missed the House vote on Aug. 2 to approve the short-term disaster relief bill for livestock producers.
Akin’s campaign spokesman, Ryan Hite, said in an email Friday that Akin “was not able to vote on the Agriculture Disaster Relief Act because he was in Missouri due to the final days of campaigning” for the GOP Senate primary, which he won. Hite said he was unsure on Akin’s position on that bill or the USDA's actions on drought.
At a meeting Friday of the Missouri Farm Bureau's political action committee -- a GOP-leaning group that ended up endorsing Akin over McCaskill -- Akin explained that he opposed the overall farm bill mainly because most of its spending involves the food stamp program, which he thinks has grown too big.
"Most of the farm part of the thing, I'm quite reasonable and pretty comfortable with," the Associated Press quoted Akin as telling the farmers. He said that creating stability in agricultural markets is important, but added that he had "never been a big fan of the government, and particularly more and more growing of these programs" such as food stamps.
Other Missouri lawmakers representing mostly rural districts said they backed the House committee’s bill, and also called for quick action on disaster relief. “American farmers and ranchers are on the ropes right now, and this legislation is desperately needed,” said U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau.
Like Emerson, Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-St. Elizabeth, says he wants the House to tackle and pass a long-term farm bill in September that would address drought disaster relief. Saying that Missouri farmers and ranchers “are struggling to get by,” Luetkemeyer wrote in a column on Friday:
“The economic impact on our farm communities isn’t known just yet, but it is safe to say it is going to be devastating.”