Severe drought taxing already stressed farmers, ranchers in Colorado

Comparing drought conditions in southeast Colorado to the Dust Bowl, Jillane Hixson of Hixson Farms in Lamar, Colo., is sounding the alarm, asking for the prompt attention of state and federal officials. Farmers like Hixson, who works with her brothers, Ron and Eric Hixson, in Prowers County, Colorado, already faced economic losses with the drought of 2018 and a hard freeze in spring 2019, which greatly reduced yields. Farmers have been miserably failed, she said, by what she calls gaping holes in the U.S. Department of Agriculture safety nets. “The crop insurance has failed us,” she said. “The disaster program is failing us. Loans we can’t get. Every turn has been a brick wall.” She sent a six-page letter dated June 20 to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., requesting they tour the area to see the conditions themselves. She’s also been trying to reach Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, among others, to no avail. “Normally productive soil, now brown powder, is causing livestock to suffocate in high-wind dirt storms, amidst thousands of acres of failed winter wheat crops with no moisture to plant 2020 spring crops and even jeopardizing 2021 crops,” she wrote. In Baca County, the furthest southeast county of Colorado, the area with the worst drought, Kevin Larson, superintendent and research scientist at Plainsman Research Center, said there’s been more prevented planting than he’s ever seen before. In dryland farming areas, which aren’t irrigated, most farmers simply didn’t plant crops. The research center did plant, but nothing emerged. There’s also not enough moisture to grow grass to feed cattle and fires are a big danger. “There’s going to be very little income from the crops, because there’s not going to be any,” he said. “So things are going to be even tougher than they’ve been. There’s no doubt.”...MORE