Local farms feel drought’s impact

Madison, Onondaga counties designated natural disaster areas

Local beef and dairy producers are feeling the impacts of drought, especially those in northern and western New York.

Two dozen counties, including Madison and Onondaga, have been designated a natural disaster area, making theme ligible for federal assistance to offset the cost of crop and income losses.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated these New York counties as primary disaster areas because of the drought: Allegany; Cattaraugus; Cayuga; Chautauqua; Chemung; Cortland; Erie; Genesee; Livingston; Monroe; Niagara; Onondaga; Ontario; Orleans; Schuyler; Seneca; Steuben; Tioga; Tompkins; Wayne; Wyoming and Yates.

Farmers in these adjoining counties are also eligible for disaster relief: Broome; Chenango; Madison and Oswego. From Syracuse to Buffalo, precipitation is 10 to 12 inches below normal in many places, leaving corn brown and stunted and forcing farms to purchase feed for animals at a time when profits are already low.

“We have dairy farms hauling in tens of thousands of gallons of water because their wells can’t meet demand,” said Todd Kusnierz of Moreau, state Senate Agriculture Committee director. “It takes a lot of equipment and man- power. That adds up really fast. Some farmers a half-million dollars in the hole.”

Kusnierz works for Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Pattie Ritchie, R-St. Lawrence County, whose 48th district, which also includes Oswego and Jefferson counties, has been hard hit by lack of rain.

The problem began with the

mild, snowless winter of 2016 and was compounded by a hot, dry summer.

Capital Region precipitation is 3.5 inches below normal, not enough to qualify for drought status, said meteorologist Joseph Villani of the National Weather Service in Albany. However, area farms are still affected.

Fred Tracy has 100 registered Black Angus beef cows at his farm in Stillwater.

“They’re glorified lawn mowers,” he said. “Normally, they get turned out to pasture in May and all we have to do is check on them until late September or well into October.”

This year, however, with lack of rain, grass in the field didn’t grow back as quickly so in August he had to start supplementing the animals’ diet with corn silage and dry hay, at considerable expense.

The situation is so dire in western New York that some beef farms have begun selling off their cattle, at fairly low prices.

“It definitely would be a good time to buy cattle if you had feed or forage to feed them,” Tracy said.

Local dairy farmers are impacted, too.

DavidWood, owner of Eildon Tweed Farm in Charlton, said he’s bringing in five or six loads of water per day at 2,500 gallons each, to keephismore than 2,000 animals supplied. Cows consume up to 50 gallons of water each, per day.

“There’s a stream we source from so we aren’t paying for the water, but it’s the expense of extra time and labor,” Wood said. “Still, we’re very fortunate compared to western New York.”

Higher drought-related costs are specially problematic for dairy farms because the price they get for milk has fallen in half during the past two years. One of the main reasons is that many farms expanded their herds when prices were high. Now there is simply too much milk being produced.

Declining U.S. exports have contributed to an oversupply of domestic milk, too.

“Dairy processors are maxed out,” said Chuck Curtiss, owner of Willow Marsh Farm in Ballston Spa. “Plants have no use for all this excess milk. Some farms are scrambling to find amarket for their milk. Many dairy farms are selling at $4- to $5-per-hundredweight below the cost of production, wholesale. It’s horribly low. Ask anyone, ‘How would you like to take a 50 percent pay cut?’”

In short, the drought is worsening an already bad price situation, Curtiss said.

“It’s a double- edged sword heading in thewrong direction,” he said.