Federal drought relief policy leaves some farmers without help

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (First Alert 4) – On a fall day this year, as Wilburn Harris walked around his cattle farm in Drexel, Missouri, he encountered brown grass, cracked soil and half-empty ponds.

He’s used to it. The drought last year was so severe that he had to haul water and hay to his farm to feed and water the animals.

Payments totaling about $11,000 from the federal Livestock Disaster Assistance Program, or LFP, helped him keep his 70 head of cattle.

“If it weren’t for the (Livestock Feed Remediation Program), I probably would have gotten rid of some of them,” he said. “I would have to.”

Things were looking up this year until September, when Cass County, where it is located, experienced a severe drought. Around the same time, a third of the American Midwest was also experiencing drought.

Since 1999, the US Drought Monitor has quantified drought across the country. Using dozens of different source data and consulting with hundreds of experts and stakeholders, Drought Monitor authors produce an updated map each week that ranks drought conditions by county on a scale from D0 to D4, with D4 being the worst.

The US Drought Monitor’s website says it “does not recommend its use for determining local conditions.” However, many farmers rely on it to tell the government when local conditions require support from federal programs.

One of them is LFP. Under the LFP, livestock producers are eligible for some relief if part of their county reaches at least a D3, or “extreme” drought monitor for any period of time, or is classified as being in a D2, or “severe” drought category . eight weeks in a row.

With many Midwestern states experiencing severe drought so late in the year, it could mean some people who relied on drought relief programs last year won’t be eligible for them this year.

That’s why some experts who work directly with farmers say the policy is misguided.

Missouri State Climatologist Zach Leasor is part of the drought monitor development process. While he believes the Drought Monitor is a good scientific tool for describing drought, he said policies that determine when emergency relief will begin could leave farmers without help.

First, there is the issue of how long a drought must last on the Drought Monitor to be eligible for the program.

“You can think of hypothetical situations where things could go wrong,” Leazor said. “Seven weeks without rain will completely deplete your pastures. But let’s say a tropical system arrives in the eighth week and there’s a lot of rainfall and you don’t get a D2 drought designation. Does that mean you haven’t already had seven weeks of no grazing and having to buy hay?”

The second problem is monitor resolution. While the makers of the Drought Monitor try to accurately reflect drought conditions, they can’t always capture everything at the area or farm scale.

“And so I’m sure there were farmers who had pastures that were in terrible condition and unfortunately they missed out,” Leasor said.

Harris said conditions on his farm were poor for a month before the Drought Monitor reflected D2 conditions, and he had to supplement his cattle’s diet more than usual.

“In August the rain stopped and everything burned,” he said.

Science behind the monitor

The Drought Monitor was created several years before the aid programs that use it existed, and Drought Monitor experts were not consulted about how it should be applied to policy.

Brian Fuchs, one of about a dozen Drought Monitor contributors, says this is a good thing “because there is a clear separation between politics and science.”

Fuchs has worked at the National Drought Mitigation Center since 2005. This means he has worked with the Drought Monitor before and since it was first used as a metric for LFP, which was formalized and funded through the 2008 Farm Bill. Previously, limited benefits were provided to livestock farmers.

“At that point, it kind of validated the first eight or nine years of the Drought Monitor,” he said. “I think what it essentially meant was, ‘Hey, we know this is a useful tool, we know there’s a lot of good science behind it, there’s nothing else like it, and we’re going to start using it formally.’ capacity.'”

Fuchs said some of the criticism about the program stems from misconceptions about Drought Monitor.

For example, the Drought Monitor is not automated and is not created from scratch every week.

“People don’t understand that it’s not a model, that there are people manually moving these lines, that we don’t do a complete redraw every week,” he said.

Each Drought Monitor author is responsible for the map for four to six weeks each year, and usually for two weeks at a time, before passing it on to the next author.

When it’s his turn, Fuchs said the first step is to review the previous week’s map and the discussion around it. About 500 people discuss weekly products on a listserv he calls “instant peer review.” Fuchs will also read the three to five pages of notes the author left last week and take note of any changes they made to the monitor.

Next, Fuchs will look at dozens of data sources and consult with experts to decide where a “data match” suggests changes should be made to the map.

“You’d be surprised how many people think the Drought Monitor is just rain,” he said. It’s not. The data includes data such as precipitation, river flow and soil moisture.

“We are trying to identify drought and where drought is intensifying at different times,” he added.

Fuchs said people also have misconceptions about what the LFP relief money is for.

“This won’t happen in every drought,” he said. “It won’t be when there are problems associated with drought, but the worst of the worst drought.”

Mass reporting

If stakeholders believe the drought monitoring system is missing something, they can report what they see on the ground.

Iowa State Climatologist Justin Glisan said he gets calls every week from farmers saying the monitor doesn’t reflect conditions on their farms.

“So what I like to do – I work alone, so sometimes it’s hard to do – but actually go away, field scout, go to these places to get a feel for what our producers see, and then try to get an accurate portrayal of it on the Drought Monitor map,” Glisan said.

A formal way of chronicling field observations is through the National Drought Mitigation Center Observer Reports, or CMOR system. It allows people to submit photos of real-life conditions, which appear in the database and on an interactive map.

Reagan Bluel, a dairy field specialist at the University of Missouri, works with farmers and encourages them to submit observations even when there is no drought.

“When they provide the raw data (photos), it allows us to better assess the severity of the drought when they provide the drought data,” she said. “So for the last probably four years we’ve been working on marching around the state to make sure everyone knows about this website and how easy it is to submit from a smartphone so we can announce drought levels faster. “

She said those efforts have led to noticeable changes in the Drought Monitor’s response to some areas.

“You can tell which counties have innovative farmers and which counties are still old school with cots,” she said. “Because Drought Monitor is more responsive to these innovative, progressive producers.”

Fuchs said the Drought Monitor is constantly trying to improve. “We don’t put blinders on or plug our ears,” he said.

Anyone, not just farmers, can send photos and observations of drought conditions to go.unl.edu/cmor_drought.

Meanwhile, one of Leasor’s proposals for federal aid is a more personalized system in which farmers can apply for drought assistance even if their counties’ drought levels don’t meet specific criteria. One reason for this is that the effects of drought are not always obvious. For example, economic impacts can be seen in crop prices even outside drought areas, Leasor said.

“(Drought is) kind of an abstract climate threat that you have to try to measure, and that’s why maybe some flexibility would be helpful,” Leasor said.

This system could allow Wilburn Harris some relief. But just a week after the Drought Monitor issued a severe drought warning for the entire Cass Country, light rain fell and the county entered D1, dashing hopes for federal aid for it.

He was glad for the rain. But experts like Fuchs say flash droughts that quickly develop or intensify are becoming more common, and federal policy isn’t stepping in to help when they happen at D2. This has Harris worried about the future.

“Trying to adapt to the unknown becomes a challenge for me,” he said. “I just can’t imagine some of the things we need to do and the costs that would be involved.”

Avery Martinez covers water, agriculture and the environment for First Alert 4. He is also a Report for America corps member. RFA places talented, emerging journalists in newsrooms to cover undercovered issues and communities. Reporting for America is an initiative of The GroundTruth Project, an award-winning nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to rebuilding journalism from the ground up..

This story is a product Mississippi River Basin Agriculture and Water Supplyindependent reporting network based on University of Missouri in partnership with Report for Americawith major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Copyright 2024 KMOV. All rights reserved.