From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/us/heat-forces-ranchers-to-sell-herds-to-cut-losses.html
By JACK HEALY
Published: July 15, 2012
Published: July 15, 2012
TORRINGTON,
Wyo. — As a relentless drought bakes prairie soil to dust and dries up
streams across the country, ranchers struggling to feed their cattle are
unloading them by the thousands, a wrenching decision likely to ripple
from the Plains to supermarket shelves over the next year.
Ranchers
say they are reducing their herds and selling their cattle months ahead
of schedule to avoid the mounting losses of a drought that now stretches across a record-breaking 1,016 American counties.
Irrigation ponds are shriveling to scummy puddles. Their pastures are
brown and barren. And they say the prices of hay and other feed are
soaring beyond their reach.
“If we’re running out of grass and
we’re not growing enough feed crops to feed them the other six months of
the year, what do you do?” asked R. Scott Barrows, director of Kansas
State University’s Golden Prairie District extension office. “You
liquidate.”
So, in the latest pangs of a withering heat wave that
has threatened crops and sparked furious wildfires, ranchers are loading
up their cattle and driving to towns like Torrington, an old byway on
the Oregon Trail near the Nebraska border. They come, reluctantly, to
sell.
On a normal summer Wednesday, the Torrington Livestock
Markets would be quiet, and cows and their calves would be out on waving
fields of buffalo grass, gaining weight for the autumn. But it is doing
four times as much early-season business as usual, driven by parched
conditions. Last month, 17,144 head of cattle were auctioned off,
compared with 3,336 in June 2011.
“They’re getting frustrated, and they’re at a loss for what to do with their cattle,” said Michael Schmitt, an owner of the livestock market.
Many cattle producers are selling off less-profitable animals with the
hopes of holding onto part of their herd. But the smaller the rancher,
the deeper their troubles, and the more they are cutting.
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