Drought a Sign of a New Reality

By ART CULLEN

Thank goodness for those few showers that made the blooming lilacs smell all the sweeter on Sunday. Still, the lake level is far from the dam, as sure a sign as any of how dry it has been. As soon as farmers dusted off their hands and put away their planters their first thought was, “Sure hope it rains.”

The corn is sprouting and the grass is green. Buena Vista County, Iowa, however, was listed in “severe” drought on May 13 on the US Drought Monitor. The best rain we got was 1.23 inches on May 9, reports weatherman Keith Stoeber of Sioux Rapids. Otherwise it’s mainly zeroes with a few traces spotted in. Most of Iowa is too dry. We should get used to it.

Everyone paying attention agrees that the Central Plains and West are locked in an extended drought. Wells are running dry in California’s central valley, heart of the dairy industry. Farmers are plowing under crops and pulling out trees in the Golden State, America’s top ag producer. Wildfires are starting early again. So are border water disputes between Oregon and California.

The Dakotas are parched. The livestock trade press is full of headlines about how to adjust to the new reality. There are big virtual seminars going on about what to do about the declining Ogallala aquifer slaking most of the nation’s cattle between Amarillo and Dodge City.

Buffalo Ridge appears to be on the eastern edge of where the drought belt is settling. It could last decades.

Iowa has been through an especially wet century that is turning drier, pocked by extreme weather events. We may be dry now, but by June there could be flash flooding. Cedar Rapids, Des Moines and St. Louis are not prepared. Hamburg and Pacific Junction, Iowa, certainly weren’t a few years ago when they washed away with the Missouri. Our cropping systems can’t take that kind of abuse.

Extreme weather, from ice storms in Texas to five-inch Iowa rains in June, is convincing people that we need to build more reliability and resiliency into our systems. Farmers who wrapped up work lickety-split get nervous about blue sky. Although prices are booming, nobody likes volatility in weather or markets. Weather watchers compare this year to the drought of 2012. Corn production fell 26%. What does that do to this market?

Resiliency should be our watchword. It can stabilize production and markets, and build security.

We are losing our soil — the base of our productive capacity — to the Gulf of Mexico. Healthier soil stays in place and stores water so it doesn’t flood Des Moines.

It’s a relatively inexpensive fix — winter cover crops can solve a lot of our surface water pollution and erosion. They help reduce nitrogen loss, which is a major greenhouse gas. Make the profitability of cover crops evident to the landlord and you will have them.

Reducing tillage and chemical usage with proven techniques that maintain or actually improve crop yields can turn agriculture from an extreme weather creator (bare soil bakes and blows and leads to more heat) to a net climate benefactor (covered soil stores carbon and builds tilth). No-till farmers using cover crops tend to get in earlier during wet springs and endure drought better using the latest seed technology. A perennial grain crop, keranza, developed from wheatgrass at the Land Institute in Salina, Kan., is showing 90% reductions in field nutrient losses in Central Minnesota trials. It could be our future, and deserves USDA support and propagation. Eliminating tillage reverses the carbon cycle.

Slowing down the water in northern Iowa prevents flooding in St. Louis and erosion of the Gulf Coast, which costs us untold billions.

The cheapest first step in building national resilience against extreme weather is through agriculture. Our food security depends on it.

We should be taking urgent action now, in Des Moines and Washington, to maintain a stable food supply by putting resilience at the core of our food policy.

Unfortunately, the speed at which the machinery can react is too slow. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has made a promising start by adding 4 million acres to the Conservation Reserve Program, which sets aside land in grass on contract. We need a lot bigger strides fast to keep up.

People keep saying we better get this figured out because we only have 10 years. That line started about 10 years ago. In fact, we are plundering the almond groves, and the dairy cows in the San Joaquin Valley soon will have nothing to drink. The crisis is here. Congress won’t vote on a new farm bill for a couple years. We don’t have that much time. When you look at that drought monitor map you sense the midnight hour. We can fix it, but we have to start now with big and direct investments in agricultural conservation.

Art Cullen is the publisher and editor of The Storm Lake Times. He won the the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2017 and is the author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.” Cullen can be reached at times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 15, 2021

Populist.com