Area farmers could make hay of drought crisis

ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JERRY ENGLER
Marion County farmers knew that earlier rains that resulted in good hay crops put them in position to profit in the middle of areas stricken by drought. But a U.S. Department of Agriculture bombshell announcement Monday illustrated the pressures.

In apparent response to calls for help from much of the rest of Kansas and bordering states, the USDA released Conservation Reserve Program lands in all of Kansas for grazing and haying.

USDA had released 49 western and central Kansas counties in May for CRP grazing and haying, but this decision extended the release to all 105 counties.

Local farmers already were predicting that places normally not hayed-like along creeks or ditches -would be mowed this year. CRP lands are predominantly marginal croplands paid to be set aside as plantings of native grasses for soil and wildlife preservation.

Forages of all kinds to feed cattle are in high demand with most of the high plains of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, where insufficient moisture has led to inadequate production.

Observers agreed the problem with being an island of relative plenty in a sea of drought is knowing whether the drought might catch up here, too. Marion County already is dry, with no big rain in the immediate outlook.

Marion County Extension Agent Rickey Roberts agreed that much more wheat straw was baled this year with fewer fields burned off. But his observation can’t be quantified or confirmed. Straw will be an alternative feed for those beef producers who can’t find much else, he said.

Roberts is getting calls weekly out west from farmers and ranchers who still haven’t found pasture for cattle or adequate feed for animals they are holding in drylot.

Roberts said these producers are selling their calves, and culling down the cow numbers, hoping they can hang on a little longer. One caller told him it will be all over Aug. 1. He’ll run out of hay with no way to get more.

“It’s a horror story,” the caller said.

People are talking things like $100 a ton for alfalfa compared to $50 or $60 other years. An unconfirmed rumor tells of a semi-truckload of hay from here pulling into a Wal-Mart lot in Denver to sell horse hay alfalfa at $12 a bale-that’s $300 a ton.

At the Cooperative Grain & Supply elevator in Marion, manager Mike Thomas said more truckloads of hay and straw are coming across the scales for weighing before being shipped out for sale.

“We’re moving some out for sure,” he said. “A lot of guys talk like this hay market is going to do nothing but go up, up, up.”

Thomas said farmers have been buying more Haygrazer sudan-grass seed. With rain, the sorghum forage grass can grow six feet tall and yield three or four tons of baled forage per acre, he said.

The sudan grass was being planted both late and early, with some even planted to follow wheat-a long-shot that the rain might fall for a triple crop of wheat plus straw plus sudan.

“It’s possible the guys could get a couple of cuttings from the sudan grass,” Thomas said. “Guys are saying their alfalfa is way too high priced a feed for the old cows, and they can sell the alfalfa because the cows can eat the sudan.

“We’ve heard of people having to sell their cows all the way from Albuquerque to North Platte. We’ve had guys go from here to Northwest Nebraska to buy cows.

“But the drought’s not that far from here, you know. We’ve heard of a guy baling corn north of Abilene that’s burned and only three feet tall. I hope he’s getting it checked for nitrates. There’s so much used for corn, nitrate poisoning is real possible.

“I do see people baling a lot of straw, too,” he added. “The only trouble is they don’t always get the yield they expected because the straw is so short.”

Thomas and Roberts both noted that corn, milo and beans are looking good, but here and there leaf curling is indicating the stresses of heat and dryness. Both said good rain in July could be critical.

Roberts said the first two cuttings of alfalfa in Marion County have been good, but farmers going into the third cutting now “probably will find it pretty short.”

He said farmers in Dickinson County at the Tri-County Fair last week told him they won’t have a third cutting. He said family members in the Flint Hills north of Manhattan also told him they won’t get more cuttings under current conditions.

Every dry day that goes by exacerbates the situation, Roberts noted.

Farmers who put up prairie hay on native grass meadows should be winding up hay cutting, according to Kansas State University recommendations to maximize protein and forage quality. Others may be choosing to maximize hay quantity at the expense of quality by cutting as late as into August, Roberts said.

“I don’t really feel too bad until I see them cutting in September,” he added, noting that late cutting gives little time for grass food buildup for next year.

Moisture appeared adequate for prairie grass production earlier, but results on yields aren’t in, he said.

To suggestions that county farmers might be gambling by selling hay that they might need later, Roberts replied, “You can’t make any money by keeping seed in the bag.”

He said farmers are business managers who have to make business decisions with the situation at the time. For instance, some people were wondering whether to plant corn when the dry weather of winter continued through mid-April.

Many farmers “took the seed out of the bag” to plant anyway, and have been rewarded with a corn crop that, due to later rains, is looking good. Farmers are making the best-educated business decision on hay now, he said.

“We could get timely rains again, too,” Roberts said. “We’re always dealing with what Mother Nature’s going to do and 30 to 60 days down the road, we’ll be looking at where our decisions got us.”

Roberts said the drought helps emphasize another trend in agriculture: utilizing grain crops for cattle forage because grain prices have been low while cattle have been profitable.

He said this is evident with the development of corn-grazing studies in northern states and the push to use wheat more for pasture here.

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