Disaster relief now has followed on the heels of some weather relief in the Big Country.
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced Wednesday that $308 million in disaster relief has been allocated to offset some of the damage created by disasters that included drought, wildfires, tornadoes and floods around the country.
Vilsack's announcement promised more than $300 million in emergency assistance to 33 states and Puerto Rico to help them recover from widespread disaster.
Texas was allocated $13 million, but Farm Service Agency officials couldn't provide a county-by-county breakdown Wednesday.
In 23 counties of West Central Texas, the scarcity of rainfall created conditions that spawned 183 range fires that scorched 696,642 acres in just more than 10 months in 2010-11, the Texas Forest Service reported.
Eastland volunteer firefighter Greg Simmons lost his life battling a blaze April 15 in Gorman.
April was the most disastrous month — with huge wildfires scorching large chunks of Kent, Stonewall and Coke counties. For the forest service's Nov. 15, 2010-Sept. 9, 2011, reporting period, Coke County lost 180,141 acres to the flames, followed by Kent County with 162,775, and Stonewall County with 138,660.
The drought of 2011 also led to near-total and total crop failures around the area, and parched pastures that spurred cattle raisers to sell all or part of their herds or to board their livestock in distant pastures in nearby states.
A livestock assistance program helped some farmers and ranchers buy extra feed, and crop insurance helped some Jones County producers, said County Extension Agent Steve Estes. But overall it was a very tough year for local agriculture, he said.
"We were very, very short on our forage, with no grazing to speak of last summer," Estes said.
The wheat crop started out well in the fall of 2010, but plummeted with the lack of moisture in the early months of 2011, he said. Cotton was a flat failure, he said.
In Haskell County cotton, wheat and peanut plantings failed, causing old-timers to hark back to the years-long drought of the 1950s, said County Extension Agent Wes Utley.
"Now it's the drought of 2011" that's becoming the talk of the town, he said.
Shackelford County wheat and cotton farmers saw their crops fail, County Extension Agent Rocky Vinson said.
Michael Berry has been on the job as Comanche County Extension Agent for only two weeks, but farmers and ranchers there already have told him about the dismal year that was 2011.
"Even irrigated crops didn't do nearly as well as they normally did," Berry said, because of the excessive summer heat in the air and in the soil.
"We had a lot (of cotton) planted, but none came up," he said.
Rangeland was just as dry, forcing cattle raisers to choose between sharply culling or selling their entire herds, although some were able to transport their stock to pastures in states such as New Mexico and Kansas, Vinson said.
Greater than average winter rainfalls in recent weeks have provided winter wheat grazing and raise hopes that a grain crop will be harvested next spring. But the 90-day outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls for moderately below-average rainfall for the area.
Vilsack told The Associated Press, "There have been years that have had more intensive damage in a particular geographic area, but what's unique about last year is that virtually every part of the country was affected."
"It was different in every part of the country," Vilsack said. "We've not seen tornadoes as devastating as last spring. Flooding on the Missouri River, because of the long-standing nature of the flooding — not a two- or three-week situation — was unique. Fires in the southwest part of the country were historic in magnitude. It's been a tough year."
Vilsack said the emergency money is being used to help agricultural interests beyond what is covered by crop insurance. He said the USDA paid out $8.6 billion in crop insurance payments last year, and $17.2 billion over the past three years.
Utah and Missouri will receive the most disaster aid, together taking in $109 million, or more than one-third of the $308 million total from Department of Agriculture watershed and conservation emergency funds, Vilsack told The Associated Press Wednesday morning in advance of the announcement.
In addition to keeping U.S. agriculture profitable and helping communities rebuild, the disaster money also will spark job growth, Vilsack said.
The conservation program funds will go to producers to help remove debris from farmland, restore livestock fences and conservation structures, provide water for livestock during periods of extreme drought, and grade and shape farmland damaged by natural disasters, he said.
The forest money will help eligible owners of nonindustrial private forest land take emergency measures to restore areas damaged by disasters.
Source - http://www.reporternews.com/
