Anxiety on Main Street : As Crops Dry Up, So Does Business in Farm Centers

Yes, that swirling mist of gray and brown in the distance is really a cloud of dust. Nothing like the blinding hurricanes of soil that choked these parts in the “the dirty 30’s,” as old-timers call the dust bowl era, but an ominous sight, nonetheless.

On many days, thunderheads mass and the sky blackens above the Great Plains, only to prove a cruel tease of nature. “The clouds will come up, and you can smell it rain and hear it thunder, but we never get a drop,” complains Melvin Geist, the mayor of this remote farm town near the North Dakota border.

No one knows the ultimate cost of the great drought of 1988. But the toll is clearly mounting throughout the nation’s heartland, and it is measured in fear as well as in dollars. As business begins to dry up to match the withered crops, the anxiety is spreading right down Main Street in Eureka and in hundreds of other little communities.

“I’ve never been as scared as I am right now,” said Willis Schnabel, who has seen sales in his Coast-to-Coast hardware store fall off 25% since the rains stopped. “ . . . Many a night I wake up and lie there for two to three hours trying to figure out what we’re going to do.”

Since last September, McPherson County has recorded little more than 6 inches of precipitation--less than half the normal amount. It has been so dry that, when the news came late last month that a heavy cloudburst to the west was drenching Trail City, S.D., some Eureka residents piled into cars and drove the 75 miles just to have a look.

At mid-afternoon on June 24, a Friday, merchants closed their shops and joined hundreds of farmers in front of the bank in the center of downtown to pray for relief. At the time, the bank thermometer read 107 degrees.

Timing Is Cruel

This year’s drought hit like a cruel joke, just as the farm economy was starting to emerge from a prolonged slump that had sent many farmers into bankruptcy and accelerated the flight of both jobs and residents from the nation’s rural mid-section. “It’s like a big jolt in the jaw just when you think you’re starting to feel really great,” said Ken Stone, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University.

Stone said that sales of farm implements, new cars, building materials and other items had begun to pick up dramatically as farmers, flush with cash for the first time in years, made long-postponed purchases. But, at the very least, many farmers seem to have put their buying spree on hold as the drought intensifies, Stone explained.

That is clearly the case in McPherson County, which like many farm communities, has endured a dramatic downsizing in recent years.

Eureka, the largest city, has seen its population shrink from 1,547 in the 1970 census to about 1,320. High school enrollment is down from 278 only 15 years ago to 88 in the school year that just ended. Eight years ago there were four farm machinery dealers. Now there is only one. Once there were three new car dealerships. Only one remains. The number of grocers has dropped from four to two.

Sales Had Been Brisk

Still, things had begun to look up. Cattle prices were good last fall, putting many people in a spending mood. Arnold Lapp, a realtor, said home sales jumped 15% in 1987. Sales were also brisk over at Gab Motors, the Dodge-Chrysler dealer, and over at the K & A Implement Shop, which had been stocking up for a big spring planting season.

Ron Hatlewick, a dairy farmer on the eastern edge of the county, also had big plans. Back in 1980, in another drought, Hatlewick thinned his herd from 135 head of cattle to 50. It took him eight years to get back to 135 head. To accommodate the revamped herd, Hatlewick had planned to build a new cattle shelter, as well as install about 400 feet of windbreak out in the pasture.

In normal years, Hatlewick can grow virtually all the hay, grain and corn he needs to feed the cattle on the 1,250 acres he farms. But the drought destroyed the entire crop. So Hatlewick will use the $12,000 he would have spent in town on building materials to buy hay and feed instead.

Meanwhile, he sold off 50 cows to raise cash and save on feed bills. “It’ll take seven or eight years to get built back up again,” said Hatlewick, obviously dejected by the setback. “And by that time we’ll have another drought.”

Pessimism Mounts

Such pessimism is snowballing. Schnabel, the hardware store man, said sales began to fall off noticeably in April after the spring rains failed. A few weeks ago, he sent back $4,000 worth of lawn mowers, barbecues, dehumidifiers, hunting rifles and other merchandise to his supplier. To save cash, Schnabel has also cut back the hours of his two employees and figures he will have to trim them back even further come winter.

The story is the same all over town. “All you see is long faces,” said Schnabel. “No smiles. They’re all down.”

Milton Herboldt, one of the owners at Gab Motors, said car sales are off 50% since May, although the service department is still busy because many people have chosen to repair old cars rather than trade them in. Business is also down about 50% at K & A, which has not sold a tractor since spring. “On an average day, we have more employees in here than customers,” said Rick Rau, the service department foreman at the implement shop.

Roger Volzke was shopping in K & A the other day, but only to buy some parts to fix his tractor. “You buy only what you really need and only fix what you absolutely have to,” said Volzke. “ . . . I had been thinking about buying an eight-row corn cultivator but when your corn don’t grow, you don’t have to cultivate it.”

No Need for Hail Insurance

Similarly, when crops do not grow, farmers do not need hail insurance. Geist, who runs an insurance agency as well serving as mayor, estimates he has lost between $3,000 and $7,000 a month in hail insurance premiums because of the drought.

And since there are no hail insurance sales, there is no reason to buy hail insurance ads in Arlo Mehlhaff’s Northwest Blade, the county’s weekly newspaper. K & A has also yanked its advertising. Mehlhaff said ad lineage is down 25% in recent months, and he has had to slash the size of the paper, which has a circulation of 2,000.

“It’ll affect every business up and down the street--the gas dealer, the implement dealer, the elevator people ‘cause there’s no grain for them to buy,” said Geist.