Drought turns into harvest of hardship for Sooner farmers

BEAVER -- C.J. Rose squints beneath his sweat-stained cap and scans the sun-scorched wheat fields that support his family. What he sees scares him.

Dead tired and coated with dust, the lanky farmer-rancher has little to show for months of plowing and planting but a stretch of shriveled stalks of wheat embedded in crusty, parched earth.

"It's been like the dream you always had has come to an end in a cloud of dust," Rose says, his voice husky, his shoulders slumped in dejection. "What people don't understand is I can work all year as hard as I can and I'm not going to get paid for it."

Harvest has come to the Great Plains and fears of failure -- or even total collapse -- loom for thousands of wheat farmers and cattle ranchers struggling through one of the worst droughts this patch of the Panhandle has seen since the Dust Bowl era. Oklahoma's losses alone will exceed a billion dollars.

It has been a domino-like disaster: No rain means no grain. No grass for cows to graze. Lighter cattle mean lower prices. And less money means more trouble for Carl J. Rose, who works the same land his father tended and his grandfather homesteaded 75 years ago.

"It seems like the harder we try, the worse we get," the 36-year- old farmer says, grabbing a chunk of cocoa-colored dirt so dry it slips through his fingers like sand. "I've never been so depressed in my whole life."

Come July, Rose faces his first financial squeeze: some $30,000 in bills. A small plot of decent-sized wheat he expected to salvage was destroyed, ironically, by water -- a May hailstorm. He didn't sell his cattle, either, because they wouldn't bring what he owes on them.

So he trudges on, working a second job with the county road department, rattling along in his rusty 1980 blue Chevy pickup that has logged its 200,000th mile and hoping his bank will help him hang on.

"I'd hate to leave," says Rose, whose family name has been on the deed to this land ever since the county started keeping records. "I've got a little boy who's 6 years old. All he wants to do is farm. I'd sure like for him to farm. I'd like for him to eat. You can't do both. At least it seems that way."

For many here, this will be a harvest of hardship.

In the Beaver County area, where nature's caprices can make or break lives, only 1.6 inches of rain fell from October through April -- slightly more than a quarter the normal amount of precipitation.

Oklahoma is expected to have its smallest wheat crop in 25 years.

Up to 85 percent of the county's winter wheat -- including abandoned acres -- could be lost. Some area farmers, having endured drought, hail and a freeze the past three years, face a possible fourth straight disaster.

Already, trouble signs are evident along the two-lane blacktops that snake through this remote region, where the howls of coyotes pierce the night and a mere 6,000 souls share an area larger than all of Rhode Island (home to more than 1 million people).

Normally, the fields are filled with lush, golden grain so thick that it covers the ground like a blanket. Now, there are sickly, ankle-high strands of wheat sprouting from land with cracks so wide you can fit your hand in them.

This is ranching country, too -- a roadside sign proclaims "Watch Your Curves, Eat More Beef" -- but livestock dealers haven't fared much better with cattle prices at a five-year low.

With pastures too dry for grazing and feed costs too high, many ranchers were forced to sell off herds at lower weights and cheaper prices -- sometimes a half or a third of last year's going rates.

"They don't WANT to get rid of their factories. It's their livelihood," says Bill Skaggs, standing in his Beaver City Stockyards, surrounded by cowboy paintings, a mounted elk's head and a stuffed coiled snake. "It's really a Catch-22. They're just doing what they need to survive. That's all."

But that's become harder with increasing business costs: Fertilizer prices rose by as much as 75 percent and diesel prices by up to 50 percent over a year ago.

"It's very hard to make it," says farmer-rancher Jerald Radcliff. "You cannot stop the expenses. You spend $75 to $80 an acre to plant the crop, then you don't get anything in return."

The Drought of `96 already has ravaged wide stretches of the Plains, causing staggering losses for parts of Kansas, Colorado and New Mexico and large sections of Oklahoma and Texas.

Texas, for instance, is enduring its second-worst natural disaster -- behind 1983's Hurricane Alicia with its $3 billion price tag. If there isn't significant rain during the summer, the $2.4 billion drought loss could double by September, state experts say.

Oklahoma faces more dire predictions: State agriculture officials last month estimated drought-related losses at up to $1.2 billion, with about 10 percent of the 71,000 producers expected to go bankrupt or quit farming.

"If somebody gave up a piece of land 10 years ago, there'd be a number of people waiting in line to farm it," Radcliff says."Today, you'd have to go begging."

The drought inevitably brings comparisons to the "Dirty 30s," the local nickname for the Dust Bowl days, when fierce winds whipped up clouds of dirt so dense it buried homes, turned roads into dunes and day into night.

Those scenes won't recur. More sophisticated farm tools, replanting and different conservation methods reduce wind erosion and prevent the soil from blowing away into dust.

Copyright 1996
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