Disaster declared for drought-stricken El Paso Co. farmers

In the far southeastern corner of El Paso County, on the land where Jean Meinzer’s family has been raising cattle for three generations, the 2002 drought never really ended.

They had to sell half the cattle that year and have never recovered.

Feeding cattle with expensive hay, instead of grass from the pasture, does not make for good business in an industry where the margin between success and failure is razor thin. But when grass isn’t growing, tough choices must be made.

“We’re feeding now and it’s been 60-degree temperatures. There’s no snow on the ground, so you see where we’re headed to again,” Meinzer said Monday. Dirt blows in the breeze.Tumbleweed chokes rural lanes. Some of her neighbors have sold their herds.

It’s a crisis facing many who live off the land in drought-stricken southern Colorado. Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a disaster declaration for El Paso County and nine other Colorado counties. A similar designation was made last summer, and what rain fell since seems to have nourished the tumbleweed but little else.

“If we don’t get something in March to start the grass, a lot of decisions are going to have to be made, because so many of these ranchers weren’t able to come out of that first drought ten years ago,” Meinzer said.

The disaster declaration allows farmers to get loans and financial assistance. Gary Wall, loan chief for the Farm Service Agency in Lakewood, said farmers and ranchers who suffered a 30-percent loss in grass and wheat are eligible.

He said many in the disaster area, which also includes Lincoln, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Crowley, Elbert, Kiowa, Kit Carson, Pueblo and Washington counties, suffered up to 40 percent losses. No estimates on the dollar losses or number of affected farmers were available.

According to Census figures, agriculture employs about 1,500 people in El Paso County. Farmers have eight months to apply for assistance.

“Everyone out here in eastern El Paso County has been affected pretty severely,” said Jim Brewer, a Yoder horse rancher and former president of the El Paso County Farm Bureau.

“I know a number of people who have sold off good chunks of their herds because they don’t have the feed to support it for the year,” he said.

Brewer’s “pasture” — if you can call it that — is brown and bald. The drought has doubled the price of hay, most of which goes to drought-stricken Texas and Oklahoma.

A La Niña pattern, a cooling of Pacific Ocean waters, is responsible for the past two years of dry weather. But ranchers like Meinzer look beyond that, to a decade of lackluster rain and snow, and worry about the future.

When her neighbor just across the county line in Pueblo sold all his cattle this month, he told Meinzer he was “tired of fighting droughts.”

With the calves soon to be born, mid-winter is usually a time of optimism at her farm. But this year, it’s tempered by the harsh offerings of Mother Nature.

“Farmers and ranchers are eternal optimists,” said Meinzer. “We see a sprig of grass. The cattle look good. Cattle prices are good right now.”

“But we are always looking at the long-term weather forecast and we’re seeing that off the coast of South America, the water is too cold.”
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