DENVER—It’s hard to imagine from the look of the lush lawns of metro Denver, but from the plains to the Front Range, much of eastern Colorado is a disaster area.
On Monday, the U.S. Agriculture Department designated 22 Colorado counties as “primary natural disaster areas” because of what the agency described as drought conditions since Jan. 1.
The declaration is the latest in a string of hard times for ranchers and farmers in an area stretching roughly from Interstate 25 east to the Kansas border and from the New Mexico border north to Lincoln County.
“Southeast Colorado had unprecedented drought in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005. We just had continual drought,” said Chuck Hanagan, the executive director for the Otero Crowley Farm Service Agency, a branch of the U.S. Agriculture Department. That was followed by blizzards, cattle deaths and trouble getting enough trucks to get crops to market.
Now drought—again.
The executive directors of county Farm Service agencies around Colorado say they hope the declaration will help by providing farmers and ranchers with low-interest loans to help them get through the winter.
Rod Johnson, the executive director for the Farm Service Agency in Kiowa County, said it has been so dry that the fields are dark brown.
“It looked like the middle of winter in July,” he said.
No grass has grown. That, combined with the harsh blizzards, has had an enormous impact.
“The livestock got hammered,” said Johnson. “We’ve lost foundation herds. The cows aborted calves. The stress on the cows has taken two to three years off their productive lives.”
He said that in an initial effort to help ranchers, the government has opened conservation-reserve acres that had been off-limits for grazing.
Quizy Lusk, the executive director for the Farm Service Agency in Baca County, said the problem is that because of the drought, ranchers and farmers have been unable to grow the supplemental food supplies that ranchers usually spread out for the cattle in the winter.
Now they face a fast-approaching winter not knowing if their cattle will survive. They may have to liquidate their herds.
“There is no feed to be had,” said Lusk. In addition, what feed is available will be very expensive.
Gerald Graybill, 39, grows alfalfa and grass on a 160-acre farm near Keenesburg, northeast of Denver. He sells his crops to horse ranchers.
He also has about 30 head of cattle on ranch land he rents south of Byers.
Like the devastated counties to the south, the drought made the land around Keenesburg look desolate most of the year, like a desert, he said.
He said the cattle near Byers had to travel great distances to get enough to eat. He appreciated being able to graze them on the reserve acres. “It’s a fight; it is always tough,” said Graybill.
Rain in August has helped his alfalfa- and grass-growing operations and he doesn’t think he will need a loan, although the amount of grass and alfalfa he’s been able to grow was “definitely down.”
Under the program, the farmers and ranchers in the 22 counties (and two more that were also declared disaster areas because of a bad freeze) can get low-interest emergency loans from the Farm Service Agency, provided eligibility requirements are met.
They have eight months to apply for loans to help cover part of their actual losses.
Hanagan said that in addition to the loans, the declaration helps the ranchers with their taxes, giving them tax breaks on any revenue they earn from selling off their cattle.
“We are the only industry that buys retail and sells wholesale,” said Hanagan. “Nobody else does it that way. We hope to break even. For a rancher or farmer, it is a heck of a year if we break even. If you make money, it is a fantastic year.”
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On the Net:
U.S. Agriculture Department:
Farm Service Agency Colorado: &topiclanding
