Drought, a farmer's worst nightmare:
Farmers suffer from every natural and man-made disaster, almost on a
yearly basis. Floods, extreme wind events, the economy, hail, and
tornadoes. But the threat that trumps all….drought. In the
aforementioned events, the damage is usually to a finite area, though
painful, the farmer can still salvage most of this crop and
break-even/make a profit. Why is drought so devastating to the farmer?
It’s actually fairly easy to understand. Drought affects every field,
every inch of land, it affects every shade of grass, every stock of
corn. If the drought is severe enough,
there is nothing to salvage.
A little about supply and demand:
Drought
of course does more than destroy a farmer’s crop. Drought also
devastates farmers with livestock. What do farm animals eat? Grass.
Hay. Grain. Right..you’re good. But no rain means there’s no grass, no
hay, and no corn for grain, which means there’s no food. So, if hay
and grain exist for sale during a drought, guess what? Large demand
(because there’s no food), little supply (hardly anyone has any to sell)
= hefty price. But the farmer has no money to pay these ridiculous
prices to feed his animals, so what does he do? Sells his cows.
Problem is, every farmer is selling his cows. So, all of a sudden you
have a large supply of cows, but the demand isn’t changing, what happens
to the price? Bottoms out. Farmers actually lose money selling their
cows during a drought, as they had more money put into the cow (in
grain, hay, and water) than they made selling the cow. But, what choice
did they have?
Gathering nuts for winter:
Farmers are like squirrels.
Farmers spend a large part of the summer preparing for the winter.
Food for animals does not exist in the winter, so you need to store
food to feed them over the winter in hay and silage (chopped up
corn/alfalfa). During drought years, in addition to losing your crop
and the grass in the pastures to feed the animals, you lose all the food
you need to prepare for the winter. So, not only do you lack food for
the livestock currently, but what are you going to do come
winter?
Farmers are weak-minded sissies:
When drought is destroying your livelihood, it affects you emotionally and mentally. Farming is 5am-9pm. Every
Sunday.
Every holiday. Every birthday. If you can imagine working 80+ hours a
week for 6 months, only to see everything you’ve worked for, destroyed
by something you can’t control. Then you realize not only did you work
your tush off for six months, but you’re also going to lose
$200,000+
invested in your fields (which was invested in fertilizer, chemical
sprays, and the seed itself). You can imagine the emotional toll.
Torture does the body good:
Many
people often agree that when taking off a band aid, the best way is rip
it off fast. It’s agonizing to rip it off slow. Wind events, floods,
tornadoes, hail, are all quick band aids. You can argue floods, but
usually they are over within a week. Drought is a different kind of
monster. It’s a slow, agonizing torture. Spanning entire seasons, and
in some extreme cases, years. It’s even more painful when those around
you receive rain, while you receive nothing. I’m not sure how a farmer
goes about keeping his sanity, with so much riding on the uncontrollable
weather.
I plan to continue to add new blog updates covering the drought in the coming week. Hopefully with some colorful pictures next time.
