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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
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Recent rains not enough to save local ag
Published September 20, 2009
SEGUIN — While forecasters are cautiously optimistic that a Pacific Ocean weather phenomenon known as El Nino could break one of the worst droughts in South Texas history, the damage is already done, say sources who follow the ag industry — and a recovery, if it ever happens, will take years.
“We don’t have the figures yet, but it’s going to be devastating,” the county’s extension agent for natural resources, Jeff Hanselka, told commissioners recently.
The county extension ag agent, Travis Franke says the effects of the drought in Guadalupe County alone, when considering farming and ranching, will easily be measured in seven figures — a big hit for the industry that once formed the financial backbone of this region and now raises an estimated $45 million or more that percolates through local pocketbooks.
“We have no corn, milo or wheat crop this summer, and that’s taking $7 million of that income away right there,” he said.
“Statewide, it’s already more than a billion dollars,” Franke said. “We don’t know what it is locally, but it’s going to be very significant.”
Franke has heard the long-term forecasts that say the surface of the South Pacific is warming in an El Nino pattern, and he has seen the statistics that suggest an El Nino brings increased rainfall in Texas.
Still, he remembers two years ago, when forecasters predicted the drought would break and saw only a smattering of summer and fall rains ahead of what became a deepening drought crisis that authorities fear rivals the 1950s drought of record.
“I think there’s a good chance the drought will break, but there are no known quantities — we’ll see what happens,” Franke said.
If it does break, the question then will be what prices farmers and ranchers get for their products.
“A lot of it has to do with whether commodities do well, and what the prices will be,” Franke said.
In February, county commissioners declared a drought disaster after Benno Luensmann of the Seguin Cattle Company and the Texas Independent Cattlemans Association told the court ranchers were selling down their breeding herds because they could no longer afford to feed them.
In a political environment where banks, insurance companies and auto manufacturers were getting billion-dollar bailouts and “economic stimulus” money was being earmarked for places and programs that detractors say don’t produce much, ranchers were hoping for federal help stabilizing the costs of grain or fuel — and not for a handout.
In eight months since, the state has followed the lead of this and many other counties and declared a disaster, but so far, County Judge Mike Wiggins has seen little in the way of federal help — and he’s asked as recently as this past week.
“I haven’t heard anything official,” Wiggins said Friday. “I’ve worked with the local county farm service agency rep, and he’s waiting for direction from the state level, which is waiting on direction from the national level. We’re still pursuing trying to come up with some type of relief, but I don’t know what that relief will be.”
What Wiggins does know is it’s bad out there.
“It’s real bad,” Wiggins said. “I don’t know that ‘devastating’ begins to describe it.”
Luensmann told commissioners last winter that ranchers would have to raise new breedstock, and the process would tack years onto any economic recovery in the local ag sector — if one comes. He was no more optimistic Saturday.
“The damage has already been done,” said Luensmann, who runs the local cattle auction.
About one-third of the local breeding herd has been sold, and a lot of this year’s open cows never did conceive because of stresses placed on them by poor feed and water stocks.
The reduction in the calf crop could easily be 25 percent or more.
Locally, cattle sales amount to about $20 million — just under half — of the local ag economy.
But that money gets spent again and again, at feed stores, clothing stores and parts stores, not to mention the local grocery store.
If half of that income was to go away, so would half of the financial perculation — a loss of $70 to $80 million.
You don’t take that kind of money out of a local economy without it being felt by everyone, Luensmann said.
“It’s going to be pretty devastating for a lot of people,” Luensmann said. “A lot of the smaller herds are gone — completely sold out. Larger herds, there’s a 20 to 50 percent reduction. It’s pretty tough. The numbers aren’t going to be there next year. There’s going to be less cattle people around with a lot less money to pay their debts.”
But that’s not even the worst of it.
Statistics show that for every full-time ag producer under age 65, there are 15 operating past what most folks consider retirement age, Luensmann said.
“Isn’t that alarming?” he asked. “Where are we going to go for our food products when those 15 of us die out? We’re liable to see real hunger in America in 10 years. When you look at the figures, for the life of me, I can’t understand what’s in the minds of our congressmen. Food is the number one need of any nation to survive.”
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