From the Baltimore Sun (TNS), by Christine Condon
T. R. Robinette, who will soon turn 65, has spent almost his entire life tending cattle in the Western Maryland farms.
Additionally, the drought this year was the worst he had ever experienced.
According to him, cattle producers like Robinette were compelled to feed cows and calves bales of hay, which are typically saved for the winter, as pastures began to dry out in late May and early June.
According to Robinette, we needed adequate pasture to produce a lot of milk for our cows when they had calves on their sides so the calves could suckle and grow well. To survive, we had to use a large portion of our winter hay supplies.
According to Robinette, whose farm is in Flintstone, east of Cumberland, several of the calves were 50 to 75 pounds lighter than usual by the time he weaned them from their moms this year.
In a year that saw record-breaking dry spells, along with periods of intense heat in the summer, Maryland farmers suffered crop loss, animal and equipment fires, and have resorted to federal assistance programs to compensate for the losses. Additionally, many are preparing for more years like 2024 due to climate change.
According to Steve Connelly, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Agriculture, recent rainstorms have given some hope that cover crops, which are planted in the fall to limit agricultural field erosion through the winter, could grow in time following weeks without precipitation. However, the suffering of the growing season would not be undone by even a little late-season luck.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the farmers,” Connelly added. because they have had a difficult year.
Maryland saw different effects
Conditions differed throughout the state. According to Jeremy Geiger, a hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Sterling, Virginia, several areas of Maryland, such as Garrett County, a portion of southern Maryland, and the lower Eastern Shore, have received 8 or less inches of precipitation this year than average.
According to Geiger, however, the other places were close to or even above normal.
The year’s harvest for local agriculture, including important items like corn, wheat, and barley, appears to be unpredictable as well, according to Shannon Dill, lead agent at the University of Maryland Extension in Talbot County. Final harvest numbers have not yet been fully tabulated. According to her, it all came down to timing when dry spells occurred during the growing cycle.
“We’ve seen some very, very bad yields, and some OK yields,” she remarked.
Although state authorities have not imposed any obligatory water restrictions, Oakland in Garrett County has implemented limitations because of dangerously low levels in the lake that supplies its water supply, and much of the state is under an official drought watch or warning.
According to Geiger, even if the remainder of the year was fairly moist, the issue this year was frequently prolonged dry spells.
In Baltimore, a streak of 38 days without any detectable precipitation that ended on November 9 broke the previous record of 32 days, which had been set in 1963. The streak, which lasted 27 days in November, matched for fifth place on the all-time list at the NWS monitoring site out west in Hagerstown.
Even though the summer drought wasn’t as severe as previous years, it was still perilous since it deprives crops like corn and soybeans of water when they need it most. Flash droughts, which are characterized by a sudden transition to extremely hot and dry weather in the early summer, occurred in some areas of Maryland.
State s drought severity triggered federal funding
According to Kimberly Graham, assistant deputy administrator of USDA’s Farm Service Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a secretarial disaster declaration for drought in 18 of Maryland’s 24 counties. According to her, the designation makes emergency loans and other relief programs available.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which rates droughts from D0 to D4, with D4 being the most severe, over 25% of Maryland counties had D3 status this year.
Back in July, the designation automatically opened up livestock-specific relief funds for the impacted counties—Allegany, Garrett, Washington, and Frederick counties.
Through the Livestock Forage Disaster Program, the federal Farm Services Agency, a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has distributed around $900,000.
During drought conditions, that program reimburses farmers for missed grazing opportunities and higher feed expenses, according to Russ Clanton, the office’s deputy state executive director. According to Clanton, the office has also received a few claims for livestock deaths and noninsured crops.
According to Clanton, a few individuals who had never before participated with us in the counties of Western Maryland came in and signed up. We reached out to a lot of people.
According to Clanton, a number of Maryland counties, including Kent, Queen Anne’s, and Caroline, were designated as D3 in November. However, by that time, the cow grazing season had already finished in Cecil and Harford counties, therefore farmers in those jurisdictions would not be able to participate in the livestock forage program. But according to Clanton, farmers there are able to seek for emergency loans.
One Maryland farmer, Hans Schmitt, assistant secretary for resource conservation at the Maryland Department of Agriculture, had to fix his combine after it caught fire during this year’s harvest.
Dry chaff can clog air intakes and other machinery, so these occurrences aren’t very common, but Schmitt said they are especially dangerous during droughts and strong winds. Schmitt witnessed the impact of dry soil, which caused dust to cloud the air, while driving through his fields.
Schmitt added that he is thankful his combine has an auto-steering feature because it was sometimes difficult to see where you were going because it was so dry and dusty.
The fire on his combine was promptly put out, and the damage was fixed by changing its wiring harness, according to Schmitt, who grows maize, soybeans, and wheat in addition to wine grapes, green beans, and lima beans close to Queen Anne’s County’s Sudlersville.
Schmitt stated that combines are among the most costly pieces of equipment that many farmers own, but he is unsure if other farmers were as fortunate.
Schmitt expressed gratitude that the damage wasn’t more severe, but he anticipates that his crop yields for the year will be below average. He suggested that it might be due to improvements in drought-tolerant cultivars of some of his crops.
We were quite fortunate, he continued, given the circumstances of the summer.
Strategies made drought less painful in some places
According to Schmitt, other farmers were able to lessen the consequences of the drought by employing irrigation systems and paying to run them during strategic periods. Although it is rarely, if ever, required, some chose to operate the systems this fall after sowing cover crops. However, he stated that it was this year.
We certainly need it, but we require more. “Schmitt said.” The key is to have slow, steady showers that last for a long time.
Some Maryland farmers are trying to adjust to the changing climate, which is predicted to bring greater temperatures and more intense and prolonged droughts.
For example, according to a 2019 study from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, Maryland’s climate would match Mississippi’s more closely by 2080.
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore Extension’s farm management specialist, Nadine Burton, advises farmers to use unconventional methods and produce.
At her farm in Princess Anne, called Tallawah Farms, she grows a diverse array of plants from other parts of the world, some of which are more accustomed to warm weather, including okra, bok choy and the Caribbean leafy vegetable callaloo, often using hoop houses to grow indoors.
These kinds of tactics make farmers more adaptable to years with harsh weather, but they also come with a cost, Burton said. She hopes to raise awareness through the UMES Extension program and link farmers to financial assistance programs that cover a portion of the upfront costs, she added.
Burton, a Jamaican, stated that we will be in a better position if we diversify our crop offering. And not only to weather the storm, but we ll be filling the gap, or creating niche markets, to make us more economically viable.
For Robinette, this year meant that many of his family s side businesses, which usually bring in extra profits to sustain the cattle raising, ground to a halt. The roadside stand that usually featured fresh cut flowers and pumpkins was sometimes empty, he said. Luckily, this year, he did get a little help from the federal government, thanks to payments from the livestock forage program.
But he, and many of the farmers he knows, are pressing on. In his case, that s what his family has been doing for generations.
We do it because we love to do it, he said. We try to break even, and if we can make a dollar, that s great. If we can t, we just keep going at it again the next year.
We re pretty resilient. We don t let a little thing like that stop us, he said.
Have a news tip? Contact Christine Condonat [email protected], 667-256-6883 and @CChristine19 on X.
2024 Baltimore Sun. Visitbaltimoresun.com. Tribune Content Agency, LLC is the distributor.
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