Total Loss of Crops Possible : Chronic Drought Taking Toll on Southeast Farms

Outwardly at least, Brock Baxter sounds about as shook up over the impending disaster looming over his parched corn and soybean fields as one of those nerves-of-steel fighter pilots who calmly radioes the tower that he is about to crash.

“If it doesn’t rain within a week, it could be total financial ruin,” the 37-year-old Baxter said this week almost nonchalantly, gazing across a gray, dusty and startlingly barren 200-acre expanse of land that should have been lush with leafy green bean plants by now. “. . . You just take one day at a time. I’ll do something else if I have to.”

No sense in Baxter crying over his predicament. It has been so dry here in north Georgia that his tears probably would just evaporate anyway.

How dry has it been? So dry that farmers putting in fence posts have dug down four feet into river bottom land and still failed to detect a trace of soil moisture. So dry that cattleman Sam Payne, unable to grow even a stubble of grass on much of his pastureland, already has dipped into the hay stocks he planned to feed his herd next winter. So dry that some of Baxter’s fields are spotted with only weeds and tiny white flecks, fertilizer pellets that would have dissolved had there been even a tease of rain since the land was plowed and prepared for planting more than six weeks ago.

While the Midwest grain belt is grappling with a dry spell that could be the worst in 50 years, parts of the Southeast are in even worse shape, gripped by a savage drought that could be the worst here since the government started keeping weather records.

Depending on who is doing the counting, the drought is either into its third, fourth or eighth year. The odds of getting enough rain to break the cycle in the next six months are virtually nil, weather experts say.

No matter what the length, the cumulative effect of several years of insufficient and erratically timed rainfall is clearly taking its toll as some farmers face the prospect, for the first time in their lives, of not just reaping a poor crop but of harvesting none at all.

Jack Dyer, the University of Georgia agricultural extension service agent here in Gordon County, said that half the soybean crop in the area was not even planted because there was not enough moisture to germinate the seeds. If soybeans do not get into the ground by July 1, the yield potential drops so dramatically that there is not much point in planting them at all, Dyer said.

Corn Crop Stunted

In March, Leonard Freeman did manage to plant 200 acres of corn, which he planned to convert to feed for his herd of 380 dairy cows. The crop should be at least shoulder high by now and ready to harvest by mid-July. But what little has sprouted barely touches Freeman’s knee. He is about ready to consider it a total loss. Meanwhile, Freeman estimates that his daily feed costs already have gone up from $800 to $1,000 and will shoot up another $300 a day or so next week when the last of his wheat silage stocks runs out and he is forced to buy hay shipped in from outside the state.

“You get up at 3 o’clock in the morning and face something such as this, it don’t help your day none when you know you got nothing to show for it,” he said with appropriately dry understatement. “I don’t mind work, I’d just like to think I’m getting a little something for it.”

Agricultural experts say that it is too early to estimate the mounting costs of the chronic dry spell because no one knows how long it will continue. But in 1986, the worst of the drought up until now, crop damage in the Southeast was believed to have topped $1 billion.

If there is a bright spot in all this it could be that--while the misery spread regionwide two years ago--this time the worst of it seems to be concentrated in an area only about one-quarter the size. Included in the most severely hit area are northern Georgia, northern Alabama, northeastern Mississippi, eastern Tennessee and the western Carolinas.

Inside that area, government weather statistics indicate, precipitation has been essentially below normal for eight straight years. Grant Googe, a climatologist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said that residents have gotten so used to shortfalls that many considered 1987 to be a good year, even though parts of the region received only 63% of what is considered normal precipitation.

Strains Rivers, Wells

Year after year of inadequate moisture has strained rivers, aquifers and wells, threatening not only agricultural production but also the basic water supplies for many communities. Asheville, Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta as well as a host of smaller communities have all been forced to restrict water use by residents and businesses.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has lost tens of millions of dollars because low water has cut the ability of its dams to generate power to sell to utilities. In Asheville, the French Broad River has dropped to record low levels. Lake Lanier, Atlanta’s main source of drinking water, has dropped 9 feet below normal levels and about 40% of the ramps used to launch recreational boats are now reported to be on dry land and unuseable.

“This is the worst drought we’ve seen in this area since records began in 1902,” said Googe. Although it would bring significant short-term relief to farmers, Googe said that the drought is unlikely to break even if it rains gushers in the next few weeks.

Googe said that northern Georgia, for example, would need to get 20 to 24 inches of rain over the next three months--about twice the level considered good for a summer--to adequately recharge deep water aquifers and end the drought. The odds of that happening are less than one in a hundred, he said. Over six months, he said, the chance of accumulating enough precipitation to end the drought is no better than 5% and maybe less.

For farmers, the timing of the rainfall is every bit as important as the amount. In 1986, the big drop-off in rainfall hit in July and early August, after the crops were in. This year, however, the drought intensified just at planting time.

Expects Big Losses

In early May, Baxter prepared and fertilized 1,600 acres of land to plant soybeans. Isolated showers have given him enough moisture to get about half that crop in. Those beans that have sprouted are withering and dying. Even the 600 acres of corn he planted on prime river bottom land is going downhill fast. “It’s just gotten worse year after year,” he said. “You don’t have anything in the subsoil left to draw on.” Though he has never suffered a loss on his farm operations, Baxter estimated that he could run up to $300,000 in the red this year. Already stretched to his credit limit, he might be forced out of business by such losses, Baxter said.

In Washington on Wednesday, a congressional task force urged Agriculture Secretary Richard E. Lyng to take additional steps to help the nation’s drought-stricken farmers but declared that it is too early to consider legislation that would provide financial aid to victims of the disaster.

The task force called on Lyng to sell government-owned surplus grain to livestock producers at a 25% discount; to allow drought victims to retroactively enroll in a surplus-reduction program that pays farmers not to grow crops and to allow the harvesting of crops on land that has been idled for conservation purposes.

Lyng indicated that he could go along with only the first recommendation. The department already has allowed farmers to cut hay and graze livestock on land that had been idled in another surplus-reduction program.

The senators and House members cautioned against rapid enactment of relief legislation. Pressure is building for renewal of a 1986 measure that paid $535 million to 180,000 victims of drought, floods and hailstorms.

Extent of Danger Unknown

“We don’t know how widespread the danger is,” said Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), as a government meteorologist testified that the corn crop needs rain within two weeks but soybeans and cotton can hold out considerably longer.

However, Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said that a formal pledge by the task force to help protect incomes “to the maximum extent practicable” should send a signal to farmers that “it’s worth hanging on.”

Both on and off the farm, life in parts of the Southeast has been turned topsy-turvy by chronic drought. At the northeastern tip of the state, Rabun County, which normally records the highest rainfall amounts in Georgia, this year has notched some of the lowest.

Drought has become such a preoccupation in these parts that an Alabama radio station gave away truckloads of water as a promotion instead of money or concert tickets. In one Atlanta suburb, authorities launched a criminal investigation into whether a golf course had managed to illegally siphon off city water, lowering pressure for homes and fire fighting equipment. At the Atlanta Country Club, scene of this weekend’s Atlanta Golf Classic on the professional tour, the lake that guards the 18th green is so low that duffers can easily play shots that once would have been submerged.

Volunteer horticulturists who man the plant hot line at the Atlanta Botanical Garden have been deluged with calls from nervous gardeners seeking advice on how to keep plants from dying in the face of watering restrictions imposed by many cities. But Ann Crammond, the director of the Botanical Garden, said that the best thing for amateur gardeners is to look west for future foliage saving tips.

“Eventually we must do what people in Arizona and Southern California do, use plants that are drought resistant,” she said. “. . . This is no longer the land of the magnolias and the camellias and the gardenias.”

Researcher Edith Stanley in Atlanta contributed to this story.