Published: May 31, 2007 01:19 am      

Drought emergency looms in state

CHARLESTON — Agriculture Commissioner Gus Douglass said he’s about a week to 10 days from asking Gov. Joe Manchin and the Legislature to declare a drought emergency and restart a decade-old program to transport water to farmers in need.

Douglass said he was taking a break from doing a “rain dance” to talk about the pending disaster. He predicts everything from soybeans and tomatoes to sweet corn will be in short supply by summer’s end.

“Many people did get their corn planted, but the growth is nowhere near normal,” Douglass said. “Those individuals that planted within the past two weeks or so, there is no moisture to germinate, and it’s just lying there.

“Corn, soybeans — there is a danger of total loss in those crops in that those seeds that get a little moisture and now receive none will die.”

Douglass said farmers count on a spring rainfall of 6.8 to 7.4 inches by the end of May. So far, the agriculture department has recorded an average of less than 1 inch statewide, he said.

“That’s dire,” he said.

The National Weather Service is reporting that in Charleston, only 2.1 inches of rain has fallen this month, almost 2 inches below the average for May.

Parkersburg has had only 0.6 of an inch, 3 inches less than usual.

Huntington also has had 3 inches less than its average for the month.

The rest of the state — especially the southern parts and the farmland of the Eastern Panhandle — is in a similar situation.

“The dry — it is tough right now,” said Jamie Kinsey, secretary-treasurer of the state Farm Bureau and a Taylor County farmer. “There is nothing we can really do to control it.”

Kinsey said peach and strawberry farmers who already were struggling to save their fruit after an Easter freeze won’t get much relief in the coming weeks, as weather forecasters predict the dry spell will continue.

But those who might be in for the toughest time are cattle farmers.

“May being extremely dry has affected a lot of those livestock producers more than anybody due to low pasture growth,” Kinsey said. “That first cutting of the hay crop is going to be shorter due to that lost growth.”

Douglass said the only upside to the dry weather right now might be that it has made the first hay harvest easier and put it about two weeks ahead of schedule.

“My staff is traveling around this past week and said just about every farmer was in the field cutting hay, trying to save it,” he said. “But if there is no second crop, then everybody is in trouble.”

In addition to worrying about what their animals will eat, some farmers are concerned about possible water shortages.

“Cow and calf operations are seeing some problems with their water sources for drinking,” Kinsey said. “At this early stage of what looks likely to be a dry summer, that’s already a concern.

“The problem of having to haul water from farm to farm is difficult,” he said. “Finding a way to hook up to a spigot or haul out 1,000 gallons somewhere. . .There are some parts of the state where they have dams or other sources that make that easier, but not all.”

Farmers in the state are raising a total of about 450,000 head of cattle right now. Four hundred of those cows are on Kinsey’s family’s farm.

“I know what they’re going through because we’re going through it right now,” he said.

Douglass said his own farm in Mason County is feeling the effects of the dry weather.

The best option might be a method used during the last extreme drought in the 1990s. Then, state officials took advantage of a federal program that allowed them to buy hundreds of 150- to 300-gallon water tanks to fill and transport to farms in need of hydration.

Some of those tanks are still around, but the program would need a funding boost to start back up.

“We still have a few of those that maybe we can salvage,” Douglass said. “If it doesn’t get any better, I would anticipate going to the governor and the Legislature and ask that they initiate this program again.”

Douglass said in the next couple of days he will ask farm service and agriculture extension agents to start surveying farmers to see the extent of the damage so far.

“I expect my mail will be picking up in the next few days,” he said, referring to complaints and concerns from farmers.

Meteorologists at the National Weather Service in Charleston said the capital city isn’t too far behind in precipitation for the year — about 3 below normal for the five-month period — but May has been a different story for the whole state.

“There is definitely a dry spell going on,” meteorologist Chris Leonardi said. “It’s not as bad as in Georgia or some other parts of the Southeast, but it’s definitely happening.”

The last time the weather service measured rain in Charleston was May 18.

“We’ve had 10 straight dry days, and there’s not much chance of seeing any significant rain any time soon,” Leonardi said.

Leonardi said meteorologists are tracking a cold front that is supposed to arrive in the area and possibly bring some rain this weekend.

“But even that is doubtful,” he said. “For the short term, the dry pattern is going to stay. If we get anything, it will be those typical, pop-up, quick afternoon thunderstorms.”

Leonardi said most of the state, from Beckley to Huntington to the mid-Ohio valley, is 2 to 3 inches behind what would be considered normal precipitation during the month of May.

“More or less everybody is seeing a deficit,” he said. “With the dry ground, that allows it to stay hot, and the hotter you get, the less chance there will be for rain. It becomes a cycle. We might be in this hot and dry pattern for the foreseeable future.”

Kinsey said the first few dry days of May came as a sort of blessing for some farmers.

“A lot of your corn planting began in the early part of the month, and having that dry ground at first was sort of beneficial,” he said. “But now they need that rain.”

In many parts of the country frequently plagued by drought — like the plains of the Midwest — farmers actually are better equipped to deal with dry weather than those in the Mountain State.

“In this state, we can’t irrigate,” Kinsey said. “The terrain and the size of the farms — you can’t pivot and then cover 300 and some acres with that pivot.”

Douglass said most of the state’s vegetable growers have “learned to maintain some semblance of irrigation,” but still he said, “The folks that keep the farmers’ markets going in the state are really struggling to maintain the tomatoes and other crops out there. And the sweet corn that does not have irrigation will probably be in very short supply.”

Kinsey said there are few ways for farmers to prepare for a harsh summer even if they’re expecting one.

“One of the precautionary steps is, if you know it’s going to be dry, you can run your animals not quite as heavily as you might,” he said. “If you can find a way to not push your land as hard as in some years, that can help. Having available land so you can sort of rotate the animals can help.

“But even if you’ve added lime or fertilizer to get those nutrients into your ground, you have to have that water.”