Hot and Dry and Pricey

Ah, the vagaries of weather. In Southern California that means too much sunshine, if that’s possible, or too much rain, an anomaly. We’re lucky.

Other parts of the country routinely must endure tornadoes or hurricanes, and now a dreadful drought has withered cotton, corn and wheat in parts of the Southwest and other regions. Cattlemen are taking their stock to market early because they cannot afford rising feed prices, and there is little usable grazing land as an alternative. The Agriculture Department plans to sell 45 million bushels of grain from emergency reserves to provide relief to livestock growers.

Some are calling the drought the worst in 100 years; parts of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s were wetter than some of the affected areas are today. All this may seem far removed from Southern California life, but the devastating effects eventually will become apparent for us all in higher food prices. For now, beef prices are down because ranchers are unloading their cattle to reduce losses, which, for some families, are proving catastrophic. After the glut of beef is gone, consumers will be paying higher prices at the meat counter. Prices could creep up for other foods too because food processors will have to pay higher prices for grain.

Weather, of course, is just one of the many pressures on food prices. Feeding people has become a global enterprise for agribusiness. U.S. wheat is sold to China in abundant volume. California oranges and Washington apples go to Japan. With developing countries enjoying a higher standard of living, they are consuming greater quantities of meat, much of it imported. In all, American farmers are enjoying robust export markets, which will help wean them off the farm supports that Congress began phasing out this year.

But in confronting the drought, farmers can do little but wait for it to pass. That reality is inescapable in the thirsty fields of parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado. Some thunderstorms occurred recently, but they were too few and too small to help much. Ah, the weather. Friend, tormentor and topic No. 1 in a big section of the United States this year.