Record drought ravaged parts of Texas and Oklahoma this year, but Missouri was hard hit, too — and now the state's dairy and cattle industries are scrambling to cope with the aftereffects of the parched summer as they prepare for winter.
"We've heard an awful lot about the extreme drought in Texas and Oklahoma, and areas farther west," said Mike Collins, a professor of plant science at the University of Missouri. "But if you look at the drought map, it projects into Missouri."
Last month, in fact, the U.S. Department of Agriculture designated 101 Missouri counties natural disaster areas because of the drought, and one estimate puts the loss to the state's grain farmers at nearly $350 million. University of Missouri researchers say the state would need to get an unlikely 13 feet of snow this winter to compensate for the scorching heat and lack of rain that shrank crop yields last summer.
"In mid-Missouri and particularly as you go southwest, (the soil) was pretty well depleted four to six feet down. There's not much left there for plant growth," said Randy Miles, a soil scientist with the university. "We need to recharge the piggy bank, so to speak."
The drought's impact is reaching into all areas of agriculture, and could eventually hit consumers. Corn farmers in Missouri lost roughly 24 million bushels of yield because of the drought, and the state's soybean farmers about 20 million. The drought also scorched pasture and forage lands, and now, hay — a newly precious commodity — has been heading out of state by the truckload.
"We see a lot of hay moving east to west," Collins said. "A lot of hay heading west on the interstate."
Missouri is the country's third-largest producer of hay, but this year hay is in such great demand from cattle and dairy farmers in neighboring states that producers, here and elsewhere, are scrambling to secure enough of it to make it through the winter.
"I had to drive 100 miles north, to get it from a guy in Green Ridge," said Darrel Franson, a cattle farmer who heads the Missouri Forage and Grassland Council. "In the half an hour I'm talking to him, his phone rings three times, with producers from Texas willing to buy anything he's got, at any price."
Cattle ranchers and dairy farmers typically grow much of the hay they feed their animals. But this year, burned-up pasture land forced them to feed hay months before they typically would. At the same time, the weather shrank hay yields by as much as 15 to 30 percent in some places.
Some worry that, by mid-winter, producers will be caught without enough to feed their animals.
"In January or February, the farmer is going to take a walk out into his pasture and see his cows are thin. He's going to run in and say, 'Ma, the cows are awful thin.' Then they're going to look at the ground and see there's no grass there," Franson said. "They're going to get on the phone to get some hay, and they won't find any."
DAIRY FARMER FEARS
The situation is not just a question of scarcity, but of quality. Hay that survives the weather isn't the most nutritious, which means cows need more of it. Dairy cows, particularly, need better-quality hay to produce better milk, and for the higher-quality hay, producers are paying as much as $300 a ton.
"That's well above what we normally see," Collins said.
The state's dairymen are especially concerned.
"This is going to be one of the toughest challenges I've seen in my lifetime, seeing these cows through the winter," said Larry Purdom, head of the Missouri Dairy Association. "A lot of times in the past when hay prices were up, we could use corn, but that's been at record highs, and that's expensive now, too."
The state's dairy herd has shrunk to about 90,000 from 100,000 in recent years, Purdom said, and could get even smaller as aging dairy farmers decide to sell their cows and get out of the business rather than face higher feed costs.
"This is serious," Purdom said. "We have eight or nine processing plants in the state, and if we don't have milk for them, we're worried they'll take their operations somewhere else, and that means jobs."
Cattle ranchers, too, are being forced to pay higher feed prices, and some are selling off their animals.
"I sold 20 percent of my herd," Franson said. "I have to match up my cattle with my forage supply."
Cattle ranchers, however, are still in the black, with high beef prices buoyed by demand overseas and a shrunken American cattle population.
"Given where prices are today, producers are trying to take advantage of that," said Jeff Windett, of the Missouri Cattlemen's Association.
So are the state's hay producers. "Anytime you have a situation like this, it makes it difficult for some," Collins said. "But for farmers in the business of producing hay, this is an excellent year."
Researchers at the University of Missouri and the states' farmers, however, are worried about next year. If soil moisture isn't adequately replenished over the winter months, farmers could face depleted soils for a second year. That puts farmers in an odd situation: Hoping for a bad winter.
"If we don't get enough input over the next few months, we could go into the next season without enough moisture," Miles said. "Even though it might not be that amenable to some, and it may create some slushy driving hazards and so on, from a soil moisture viewpoint, more snow and rain may be more valuable long term."
