Article published Aug 14, 2007

In the grip of drought

By ERIN MADISON

Tribune Business Writer

The barley in Gene Curry's field west of Valier hits just above his ankles.

It should be up to his knees.

As he drives his combine across the field, the digital display frequently shows that he's getting zero bushels per acre. In the best spots, it might show 4.5 bushels per acre.

A dry-land barley crop usually produces about 30 to 60 bushels per acre, he said.

"This did about 30 last year and that was a poor year," Curry said.

In many spots, the barley is too short to feed into the combine.

Of the barley that Curry is able to harvest, the kernels are small and light.

"You can hardly feel it in your hand it's so light," Curry said, holding a handful or barley. "These kernels here, there's just nothing in them."

Like many Montana farmers, Curry is feeling the effects of a roughly decade-long drought.

He's been farming near Valier since 1989, and this is the worst crop he's ever had, he said.

While nearly all of Montana is experiencing drought conditions, it affects different areas of the state differently every year, said Jesse Aber, water planner for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

This year, the hardest-hit counties include Glacier, Toole, Teton and Pondera, which were classified as extremely dry, the worst possible category, in the August Montana drought status report.

Curry estimates that his crop has seen less than 2 inches of moisture, most of which came a tenth of an inch or two tenths of an inch at a time.

"A tenth of an inch will just dampen the top of the ground," Curry said.

Since April 1, Valier has received only 56 percent of the precipitation it normally would see in the same time period, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Agriculture Statistics Service. Cut Bank, which lies in the center of the area considered "extremely dry," has received a mere 15 percent of its normal precipitation.

Other areas have statistics that show normal amounts of moisture, but those numbers can be misleading, said Peggy Stringer, director of the Montana Field Office of the National Agriculture Statistics Service.

Most of that moisture came early in the spring, and then stopped at the end of June, she said. That was followed by record-high temperatures in July.

"And because of that, everything just completely dried out," Stringer said.

Last year showed roughly the same pattern: early moisture followed by high temperatures, she said.

"It's almost like we're shifting when we get our precipitation."

That's a problem for spring crops, such as barley and spring wheat because the peak temperatures hit when those plants are flowering and forming heads, Stringer said, so instead, they're drying out.

Roger Czech, manager of Columbia Grain's elevator in Cut Bank, is seeing the effect of those climate shifts.

He's seen substantially less grain coming in than in most years.

"There are more acres left uncut than I've seen in a long time," he said.

One of his better producers, who is operating a combine for the 62nd time this year, says this is the worst year he remembers, Czech said. Other producers say 1985 was worse.

Either way, it's hard to see his customers losing their livelihood and their income, he said.

"It's very depressing in my position as manager," he said. "I guess it's my job to handle grain, and there ain't much to handle."

To top things off, grain is being sold at near-record, if not record, prices this year.

Czech's quote board shows more than $6 a bushel for wheat, and many farmers don't have any to sell.

"They wait for years to have a market like this and don't have any grain," Czech said.

As for Curry, he plans to cut some of his barley and let his cows loose on the rest of it.

It's just not economically feasible to cut the whole field, he said. If he broke one guard on his combine it would take the value of two acres worth of grain to pay for it, not to mention the price of fuel to run his combine.

Curry irrigated part of his barley field, but ran out of irrigation water from his reservoir.

"Without any supplement from Mother Nature it just wasn't enough," he said.

This was the first year since 1989 that the reservoir didn't have an adequate water supply, Curry said.

The irrigated barley looks more like dry-land barley. He's getting 20 to 30 bushels an acre from it when he should be getting 80 to 100, he said.

Curry also wasn't able to grow enough hay to feed his cows over the winter so he's looking at having it shipped from the Judith Basin area.

Finding grazing land for the cattle isn't easy either this year, he said. A neighbor usually takes most of his cows, but didn't have the forage to support them this year. Instead, Curry sent many of them 300 miles away to Fishtail.

Curry does have crop insurance to cover some of his losses.

"Crop insurance is not meant to make a living on," he said.

But some good news for producers may be that DNRC's Aber, who also serves on the Governor's advisory committee on drought, believes the drought has reached its peak and is on the way out.

The peak came somewhere around 2003, Aber said, and from 2004 to 2006, there's been some recovery.