Washington’s Woes Don’t Faze Peanut Farmers : Recession: Prolonged drought has driven much of rural Georgia to its knees. But far-off economic crises make federal aid unlikely.

To the peanut farmers standing around outside Noble’s Cotton Gin and Peanut Buying Point on a sultry fall evening, the prospect of a nationwide recession is so far removed from their troubles that it does not even register.

Their own economy has been nuked. Drought has destroyed two-thirds of this year’s crop.

The distant sounds of saber-rattling in far-off Saudi Arabia and budget debates in the alien chambers of Washington just make these farmers angry because they cannot get attention when they need it most.

Washington’s approach to federal budget problems does not wow any of these practical farm boys. It reminds them of Aesop’s fable of the grasshopper who ate as if summer would go on forever and the ant who methodically stored up food for the winter.

Chuck Coley, whose 500 acres of peanuts shriveled, offered another analogy: “Rome is burning, and they’re just fiddlin’.”

In many ways, the problems of Georgia peanut farmers reflect the unseen economic duress of the 1980s, little islands of despair amid the boom and glitter. These people have been hurting for more than a decade and are least able to absorb a national bust.

Georgia’s farm belt is thick with little towns such as Vienna (pronounced VY-enna), and they were in trouble long before this year’s drought. Vienna, population 3,000 and shrinking, once had four tractor dealerships. Now it has one.

To see the future, all Vienna has to do is look 13 miles up the road to Pinehurst, once a thriving small town now reduced to a single store at an intersection.

“The small towns like Pinehurst are already gone,” said Hobby Stripling, a local businessman who was Vienna’s mayor from 1967 until three years ago. “The places at risk now are towns like this one. If we don’t get some help, we’re going to be the next to hear the death call.”

Vienna, about 105 miles southeast of Atlanta, is the seat of Dooly County and usually ranks first in Georgia cotton production and third in peanuts. It also has a small textile factory that turns out work clothing, a Georgia Pacific plant that produces particle board and two motels to cater to the declining tourist traffic off of the interstate.

But mostly, as farming goes, so goes Vienna.

The long, scorching summers began in 1977, and theories about depletion of the atmospheric ozone layer have become a favorite topic here. Wesley White remembers just two intervening years in which drought did not damage the harvest. This year’s string of sizzling 100-degree-plus days made it the worst yet.

“This county has got hotter and hotter and hotter. I’d rather take my million-dollar farm loan to Las Vegas and put it on the red and the black. The odds are about the same,” said Jack Wall, who lost his gamble in the fields and holds a salaried job as a county extension agent. “At least in Vegas, I’d know pretty quick if I was going to win or lose.”

The picture could not have been rosier last June, when the crop looked as if it would be one of the best in years. Then came a scorching July and a sizzling August.

By this time of year, Dooly County’s nine cotton gins should be operating 24 hours a day, with hundreds of wagon loads of peanuts streaming into the peanut-buying points every afternoon.

Instead, crop losses in Georgia are in the $500-million range and rising. More than half the Dooly County peanut crop has been lost. Cotton yields are down 70%. The other day, only three wagons stopped at Noble’s vast peanut warehouse.

Democratic Gov. Joe Frank Harris recently asked the federal government to declare an agricultural disaster in 138 of Georgia’s 159 counties so that farmers could receive disaster aid.

But federal officials warned that the peanut business would not receive much attention while Washington was having trouble keeping its own head above water.

The sinking feeling is that Washington, preoccupied by the budget crisis, worries about war and a nationwide recession, has no time for peanut farmers. Places like Vienna will have to go it alone.

Going it alone could be lonely indeed.

Nobody likes the warning signs here. Last month, the Georgia Pacific plant closed for a week, for the first time in anyone’s memory. Gasoline sales are down at Hobby Stripling’s Zippy Food Mart and Service Station, and the automobile is the only way to get around in these parts. It means people are not getting around.

“Businesses have been changing hands pretty regular around here,” said Ellis Davis, the third proprietor of the True Value Hardware Store in the last 12 years. “One of the motels has changed hands five times. The Chevrolet dealer has changed four times.”

Davis’s sales are off 30% from a year ago.

“Our recession is here,” he said. “Last year at this time, I had completely sold out of sporting goods and shotgun shells. Look at them,” he added, indicating stock on a shelf. “I’ve got a 30% carry-over on peanut-plow blades. If the price of oil goes to where they’re predicting, it will be devastating.”

Downtown, the president of the Bank of Dooly, Neil Joiner, is preparing for a bad winter. Nearly all the bank’s loans are made to farmers buying seed, fertilizer and equipment, and the notes are due in November and December when the harvest is in.