This is a harvest of small crops and big uncertainties.
The land is yielding drought relief checks as much as grain, and a storehouse potentially full of longer-term agricultural problems.
The Great Drought of 1988 will not be easily consigned to history. It will linger far into next year, whether it rains or not, and have a continuing impact on the economy and on that bundle of contradictions known as American farm policy.
”I`ve got a 30,000-bushel grain bin that will be empty this fall,” said Iroquois County farmer Larry Hustedt in summing up the drought. ”Do you know anybody who wants to buy a vacation home?”
Even with a diminished harvest, it is unclear whether the drought will lead to scarcity or plenty. Bin-busting grain surpluses are shrinking, leading to talk of shortages.
But there could be glut, too. If it rains in torrents at critical times by next spring, corn and soybean production would rebound sharply. Supplies could fairly quickly move from shortage to surplus and once again focus farm policy on how to manage abundance rather than scarcity.
Overseas growers, particularly in South America, can be expected to plant more to fill the void left by short crops here and to take advantage of higher grain prices in the world market.
Although U.S. farmland is the most productive in the world, the nation no longer dominates international agriculture, so farm production must be viewed in a world context now.
An even more disturbing fact at harvest time is that the drought itself is not broken. This has raised fear that something more is afoot than cyclical weather patterns.
The long, hot summer brought assertions that the ”greenhouse effect”-a long period of gradually rising temperatures brought on mainly by man`s use of fossil fuels-has begun. Debate continues in the scientific community over doomsday projections of equatorial heat that would lay waste to America`s Farm Belt within the next 100 years.
Ridiculous as it seems, arguments are even made that a period of more frequent droughts will mean permanently higher agricultural prices, which, in turn, will entice more people to take up farming.
The disquieting implication is that the drought could be man-made, meaning that the productivity of American agriculture could be linked to the amount of polluting material pumped into the atmosphere.
Whether this is fact or fancy is hard to prove. Any evidence in that regard will be blurred if cylical weather patterns have been somehow combined with a greenhouse effect.
Even if rain comes soon, there is no guarantee that next year`s crops will yield grain in abundance. There`s a little problem known as soil moisture. It is extremely low, and it will take some gully-washers to get it back to normal.
Breaking the drought in 1989 will require moisture, and lots of it.
While recent rains and the return of more seasonal temperatures have eased the sense of crisis, soil moisture in Midwestern growing areas remains far short of normal.
Comparing this year with other drought years, Wayne Wendland, state climatologist with the Illinois Water Survey, said: ”There has been no real respite. There have been long periods where there was no precipitation, or precipitation fell on such a small area that it didn`t cover even an entire farm, or rainfall was a one-day event between long dry spells.”
Looking at the worst drought years of the Dust Bowl decade, Wendland said that total precipitation from July through December in 1934 and 1936 put those years among the 10 wettest on record for that period.
”That`s not likely to happen this year,” Wendland said, noting that July and August rainfall for the state was slightly more than half of normal. Even if regular weather patterns prevail between now and planting next spring, a combination of still inadequate soil moisture and planting in less fertile acres will yield crops of less than bumper size in 1989.
Still, the worst may be over. Millions of acres now idle are expected to be planted next spring. Some economists argue that food price increases-which showed up earlier than expected-will moderate except for meat. Reduced consumer spending for goods other than food could ease inflationary pressures and help slow interest rate increases.
As farmers look back on the hot summer, they can see that the pain was not spread evenly. Those who had grain stored from previous crops, those who irrigate crops and those who received enough rain are toting up profits.
The farmer who harvests a good soybean crop may count this year as one of the best ever. Another farmer, across the county or across the road, could be looking to government drought relief programs as the only recourse in the face of withered fields or distress sales of livestock. Total farm income, in fact, is expected to come close to matching last year as drought relief payments are included.
However, says Peter D. Bloome, assistant director of the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service, the drought relief package won`t maintain farm income. The package offers the greatest help to those most severely affected, and drought relief payments will move quickly to rural businesses as farm families pay their bills, he said.
”Many farm families will have to increase the debt load of their farm businesses,” he said. ”For those with relatively strong financial positions, two or three years of improved returns will be required to regain the financial positions of early 1988.”
Those payments won`t be enough to save farmers who were in financial trouble before the drought. They probably would have been forced off the farm within a few years in any case. So the drought has speeded up the long-term trend in American agriculture-the disappearance of smaller, marginal farms in favor of larger and presumably more efficient operations.
The drought touched many American lives in many different ways, but the most immediate effect is on the pocketbook.
Consumers are paying more for food and may buy less of everything else. One of the results of this drought was that food companies posted price increases quickly, long before the more expensive grain and corn were incorporated into their products.
The drought, then, has affected expectations of inflation and added to public doubt about the ability of the American food system to put inexpensive bread on the table.
While some sectors will reap benefits from higher grain prices and increased planting next spring, agriculture`s lean year has damaged more than just the farm economy, and has done so more quickly than expected.
Consider that the drought has shortchanged the economy by some $14 billion, given food processors an excuse to take advantage of a price adjustment opportunity, sent food prices spiraling, added to inflation fears leading to the consequent rise in interest rates and threatens to curtail grain exports, long a mainstay in America`s trade balance.
Before considering the prospect of tropical crops in the Midwest, consumers and farmers are concentrating on spending and income for this year and next.
Consumers, assured they wouldn`t be hurt too hard or too early when the dimensions of the drought became apparent, are skeptical when told again that food prices won`t advance much more because farm commodities typically don`t count for a big slice of food costs and because the record of previous droughts shows minimal effect.
The result is that shoppers buy cheaper cuts of meat, avoid the $2.50 box of Krunchies and look for less expensive substitutes to hold down the weekly grocery bill. The perception that more money is being spent on food leads to the conclusion that other items that don`t absolutely need to be purchased can be postponed.
Farmers also can postpone some buying. The farm equipment industry, long in the doldrums because of the agricultural depression, has been rebounding with the recovery in farm income. Farmers hit by the drought can very easily repair and get by with older equipment rather than going into hock for something brand new and expensive.
Farmers, after all, are inherently optimistic. They take to heart a line from Longfellow: ”Into each life some rain must fall.”
