Carnac Where Are You When We Need You?

Ah, the simpler days. Before cable, smart phones, internet and all those modern day “must haves”. We had three channels from an antenna, four if you were lucky and if your parents would let you stay up you could watch Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon on the Tonight Show. They had a bit that they called Carnac the Magnificent and of course Johnny would be at the desk with a big goofy lookin’ turban and his character was Carnac, a soothsayer or predictor of the future. He would hold an envelope up to his head and he could always tell what was in it. Of course it was all in fun and like most comedy of those days it was simple clean and funny. I wish there was such a guy that could tell us when the drought of 2011 will end.

I can’t count the hours that I’ve spent on the phone the last few weeks trying to help producers through the mind field of government regulations that surround the agriculture business like size regulations for semis hauling hay and what to do about crop insurance and the seemingly non- sensical regulations laid out by the Federal Risk Management Agency. And lest you should loose interest at this point don’t forget if you eat, you are involved in agriculture.

So whether you are a producer or consumer this is gonna’ affect us all. There are several tough spots as we try to plan for whatever the future is. The most immediate concern is with irrigated cotton producers in my district who are scared to death to shut off irrigation wells even though we know the cotton will have dismal yields at best if any at all. Their fear is that if they shut off their wells their insurance will not pay and before you start saying the government shouldn’t be helping with that you need to understand what their input costs are. My closest neighbor raises some dry land cotton and I knew cotton seed had escalated over the last few years by leaps and bounds and I just asked him out of curiosity one day, what does it take to fill your planter before you go the field? His answer reminded me why I don’t grow cotton. He said twenty four thousand dollars, just to fill the seed boxes on his cotton planter. No chemicals, no tillage, just seed boxes. I think you can see the need for risk management. He’s a medium sized producer. We have to remember that someone has to grow the cotton for the fabric we all depend on. It’s gotten to the point where no matter what crop you grow, if you do it without insurance you are insane or just so rich it doesn’t matter.

As natural resources chairman I’m in pretty constant contact with not only the State Ag Department but also the soil conservation folks whose money we appropriate and I think without a doubt they believe, and I agree with them, this drought is worse than the dust bowl. The difference is the conservation practices put into place over several generations have made a difference in whether the soil blows or stays in place. We don’t have a Carnac the Magnificent to tell us when this drought will end we’ve been running irrigation wells putting a very fragile water table at risk just to meet requirements that the RMA requires. The next thing that we’re going to do which flies in the face of everything we’ve learned from the dust bowl is that were getting ready to plow where wheat stubble or remnants of a cotton crop remain and till that soil without any knowledge of where we’re going with this drought because the insurance companies say we have to. I don’t think they are trying to be malicious, it’s just that RMA tells us what those practices need to be and they regulate the crop insurance industry. We know that if this drought continues and we plow wheat ground in preparation betting on the come, not knowing whether it will rain or not, about the first good blue norther that blows in about 90% of our topsoil is gonna’ be in Texas. So the dilemma continues. In a normal year with some sub soil moisture we wouldn’t give a second thought to dropping a plow in the ground and getting’ after it but we are in uncharted waters. Very few people alive today have ever seen a drought of this magnitude. In the meantime we’ve been in contact with the Ag Commissioner and we’ve had Congressman Cole down here in the epicenter of the drought on a windshield tour. Congressman Lucas who is also in a very influential position as House Chair of Agriculture in Washington D.C. has been kept up to speed on the situation. The Congressman is also no stranger to agriculture as he is also involved in the farming and ranching business in N.W. Oklahoma. So I guess my plea is if you’re out and about at the feed store or the co-op or the coffee shop and Carnac the Magnificent shows up ask him “When the heck is it gonna’ rain?” We kind of need to know.

If you would like to contact me while I am at the Capitol, please do not hesitate to call 1-800-522-8502 or send and email to donarmes@okhouse.gov.

And here’s a little something to think about as you go down the road:

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you're a thousand
miles from the corn field. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower