Iowa Farmers Wait, Wonder if Another Drought Looms

Linda Yoder keeps a wary eye on grain prices and she tracks the nation’s weather patterns, waiting and wondering if disaster will strike her land once again.

The drought that turned her crops into shriveled stumps last summer has not yet loosened its grip on her Iowa soil, and apprehension has replaced the anticipation she normally feels at planting time.

“I’m usually optimistic in the spring,” Yoder said. “I’m usually gung-ho . . . to get out in the fields, to smell the fresh dirt, put the crops in and watch them grow. It’s like I’m renewed. I’m not too renewed now . . . . I sit here and I see no rain. I have to say I’m a little nervous.

“The drought to other people in this country is pretty much over,” the sixth-generation farmer said, “but I’m sitting here and it isn’t.”

Rivaled Dust Bowl Days

This patch of eastern Iowa and several other areas, mostly in the Corn Belt and Great Plains, have not rebounded from last year’s dry spell that rivaled the desperate Dust Bowl days. Pockets of west-central Illinois, the Missouri-Iowa border, Kansas, the Dakotas, Montana and Wyoming are among the areas considered by experts to be in the severe-to-extreme drought category.

In the South and West, the drought has either receded or it wasn’t as dramatic. Rising poultry profits and beef prices also helped those areas.

Concern about tough times prompted President Bush to announce a speedup of about $850 million in crop payments to help farmers early in the year.

In Iowa, Gov. Terry E. Branstad has declared six counties drought-disaster areas. And top lawmakers are seeking a drought “master plan,” as government reports say 94% of Iowa soil is short of moisture.

Half Normal Rainfall

Nowhere is that more evident than Iowa County, where only half the normal rainfall has fallen in the first three months of 1989, after the driest year on record in 1988. Many farmers say they need four to six inches of rain to replenish the soil this spring.

Though it’s premature to predict doom, there are some early worrisome signs: the soil is dusty brown and some creeks are dry, forcing many farmers to pump well water for cattle.

“It looks like August around here,” said farmer Don Cronbaugh. “I’ve never seen a spring where we just didn’t have water everywhere.”

“It has the potential where ’89 could make ’88 look like a monsoon,” he said.

Hyperbole, perhaps, considering 1988’s bleak legacy in this rural county of 15,000.

Precipitation was 15 1/2 inches to 18 inches short of the 35-inch normal. The county’s 32 bushels-an-acre corn yield was Iowa’s lowest. The county produced 3.1 million bushels, compared to 14.2 million bushels in 1987.

Corn Yields Plunge

Across Iowa, corn yields averaged 84 bushels an acre last year, compared to 130 bushels in 1987. Precipitation statewide is about half the normal amount this year, after Iowa’s second-driest year on record in 1988.

Some losses have been offset by the $3.9-billion federal disaster aid program. About $10.48 million has been distributed to 1,247 county producers. Some applications still are being processed.

“Everyone who farms got some kind of drought assistance,” said Irene O’Meara, director of the county Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service.

Payments were provided to those who lost more than 35% of their crop. In Iowa County, they ranged from a few hundred dollars to the $100,000 maximum; the average was $10,000 to $20,000.

For many farmers, that wasn’t enough to make 1988 profitable but it helped pay some of last year’s debts and buy chemicals and seed for this year, O’Meara said.

Disaster Aid Helps

Yoder, who farms about 500 acres with a neighbor, said about $17,000 in disaster payments they shared helped her keep her cattle and buy feed.

But because she lost most of her crop, her income still was less than half of what it would be in a decent year.

Accepting drought aid from the government “doesn’t make me happy,” said Yoder, whose husband works as an appliance designer. But she compared it to an insurance policy.

“Farming and producing food are basic necessities of life. I’ve heard people call it welfare and a free giveaway,” she added. “I think that’s wrong.”

Already, Yoder, who lives outside Marengo, is watching weather patterns and hoping they’ll be better than 1988, when her pastures were burned up by June and her corn averaged nine bushels an acre, compared to her average 135 bushels an acre.

She also lost about two-thirds of her soybeans.

Videotapes Her Misery

Yoder, who has two daughters, captured her misery on videotape “so my children will have something to remember. . . . If I told you 30 years from now I averaged nine bushels, are you going to believe me? The corn was 3-foot tall! I’ve never seen 3-foot tall corn in my life. . . . I hope I don’t have to do that again. (But) I may. . . .”

There have never been two consecutive drought years, but if that happens, some farmers say that could doom them.

“If it’s dry this year, there’s going to be a lot of farmers, I might be one included, that are not going to make it,” said Leslie Slaymaker, who has 240 acres near Victor, on the county’s western edge.

Slaymaker and others worry because they have no cushion to fall back on like they did a year ago. Much surplus has been sold off and the ground is drier than it was in the spring of 1988.

“It’s a bigger risk planting crops and trying to get something out of them,” Slaymaker said. “There’s no way we can catch up, even in the growing season.”

“It’s going to have to be an extraordinarily good year to be an average crop year,” said Cronbaugh, who said government aid--about $8,000--and good livestock prices eased some of his losses in a year when more than 80% of his corn was wiped out.