The New Dust Bowl

Bob Roberts used to think the droughts of the Great Depression were the benchmark for tough times. Now he and other old-timers in Scottsbluff, Neb., a small farming community near the Wyoming border, are talking about the scant 2.16 in. of rain that has fallen this year--30% less than what fell during the worst of the 1930s drought years and more than 80% below normal. When it comes to water, local farmers are living through their greatest depression yet.

Driving his Ford Explorer through fields of severely stunted corn, Roberts, 67, says, "You're looking at a sad man." Stalks that should be 12 ft. high are less than 3 ft. In the next field over, a handful of tiny, withered sorghum plants — the only ones that grew — fight an obviously losing battle against cloudless skies.

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The drought is devastating farmers in Nebraska, but it's also making an impact as far away as the Capitol Hill. Majority leader Tom Daschle introduced a proposal last week in the Senate that would authorize some $5 billion in drought relief for farmers. President Bush has previously said that to restrain the federal deficit, he wants any aid to come from the $249 billion farm bill that was enacted last May. That's likely to set off a feisty debate in some congressional districts over whether farmers need extra help or have had plenty of help already.

There's little doubt that many U.S. farmers are suffering. So far this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wheat production is down 14% from last year, and corn, soybean, and cotton production have also experienced big drops. Dave Frederickson, president of the National Farmers Union, says the low harvest yield will almost certainly mean higher grocery-store prices, perhaps even before stores actually feel the pinch. Says Frederickson: "Sometimes folks will use a perceived shortage to push prices up."

In the meantime, those who cultivate crops are being forced to make some tough economic decisions. When it became clear that irrigation water pumped in from a Cheyenne, Wyo., reservoir would not last the growing season, farmers like Roberts were faced with a choice: Which crops should they abandon? Roberts had to pick between corn, a primary cash crop, and alfalfa, essential for feeding cows. He decided he needed feed more than cash.

Twenty miles southwest of Scottsbluff, Jim Wyatt, 41, who has already stripped his fields of everything but baked, brown grass, is hoping he can find enough scrub weed in neighbors' pastures to feed his cattle. Others have sold entire herds for pennies a pound. "If you can't feed them, you can't keep them," says Wyatt. Dry-land farmers, who either can't afford the expensive irrigation water or live too far out to be able to use it, are in even worse shape.

John Jones, 48, harvested less than half his usual haul of wheat this year. His millet, a grain used in birdseed, hasn't even germinated. The field is an expanse of naked earth surrounded by burned-out pastures. "In June it looked like September, and it's just getting worse," Jones says.

Indeed, the North Platte River is merely damp sand for long stretches. Local stores carry postcards of a lush, green Scotts Bluff that bears only a passing resemblance to the bare, tan-colored mesa that rises from the Nebraska prairie and once served as a landmark for settlers heading west on the Oregon Trail. Even the weeds have deserted miles of pasture, leaving nothing behind but swirling dust, starving antelope and bawling calves hungry for milk their mothers can't produce.

This year's bitter combination of high temperatures and low rainfall has been the harshest in a four-year cycle, and it has prompted the state to take action. A new task force has been charged with solving the state's water problems. Part of its charter is to prevent future disputes with Wyoming over distribution of water from the North Platte River. The decades-long fight recently cost Nebraska $20 million and has been stepped up by the 2002 drought.

Federal farm-loan managers estimate that 90% of farmers in the area are in financial trouble. Jones says he would be broke it were not for his wife's schoolteacher salary. "Everyone's asking everyone else, 'What are you doing?'" Jones says. "We all know what to do when it rains. But nobody knows how to farm when it doesn't."