Drought

A deficiency of precipitation that results in a water shortage for some activity. This article examines drought effects on farmers and communities, how early settlers adjusted to the drought hazard, the key role of the federal government in drought mitigation, and rural America’s ability to cope with future droughts.

What Is Drought?

Rural America is susceptible to all categories of drought and drought impacts. There are many different types of drought. A meteorological drought is characterized by a precipitation deficiency. Greater sunshine, high temperatures and lower relative humidities describe meteorological drought. Increased plant transpiration and evaporation, soil moisture reduction and resultant plant stress exemplify agricultural drought. Hydrological drought is evident when stream flows, reservoirs and wetlands decrease in volume or area. All three types of drought can cause economic, social and environmental impacts for rural residents (National Drought Mitigation Center).

Drought Effects

Farmers and small businesses have had a mix of successes and failures in adapting to the drought hazard. Agriculturalists incorporated numerous methods to survive moderate droughts, particularly in semi-arid regions. Small communities and farmers benefited from federal aid programs. Some researchers argue that despite these advances, rural America is still highly vulnerable to major droughts.

One problem in analyzing, assessing impacts, and delimiting drought areas is defining drought itself. What is considered a drought by a farmer whose crops withered during the summer may not be seen as a drought by a hydrologist. It follows that there can be many types of drought: agricultural, hydrological, economic and meteorological. To standardize measurement of drought magnitude, several indexes were developed. The Palmer Drought Severity Index is probably the best known. Despite attempts to define drought, confusion and uncertainty persist on what defines a drought. Not surprisingly, the result has been individual and government uncertainty on when to undertake drought remediation efforts.

Drought can have wide-ranging impacts on farmers, communities and the environment. Farmers experience decreased incomes from crop failure or reduction. Ranchers must find grazing land or purchase extra hay and feed for their cattle since drought will decrease available forage. North Dakota ranchers and farmers procured hay as far away as Colorado during the drought of 1988. Moisture deficiency frequently increases crop susceptibility to disease and pests. Drought can hurt small rural communities. Not only do small towns often have limited water supplies, but local business people are strongly dependent on purchases from farmers and ranchers. As farm incomes plummet, local businesses generate less tax revenue, resulting in decreased funds for public services. In some cases, this domino effect can devastate rural areas.

A community’s or farmer’s vulnerability to drought can determine the extent of adverse drought effects. Rural people learned in many cases how to reduce their exposure to drought. Experience is perhaps the best teacher. In his study of Great Plains farmers, Saarinen (1966) found that drought perception varied according to the degree of aridity, amount of drought experience, type of farm operation and personality differences. Farmers slow to adopt agricultural innovations were found to have a poorer understanding of the drought hazard or to underestimate drought frequency. Rural people’s experience and innovation has lessened drought hazard’s adverse consequences.

Drought is a natural element of climate; no region is immune to the drought hazard. The frequency of drought increases going from east to west across the U.S. One would expect the Eastern and Southern portions of the country to be the least vulnerable to drought, given the higher precipitation. A general lack of preparedness and experience can magnify drought damage when droughts do occur. Drought in the 1960s caused water systems to fail in the Northeast. A 1986 Southeast drought severely stressed water systems, an area with relatively small water storage capacity. Farmers in more humid areas grow crops that are less drought-resistant. The result can be cataclysmic losses. The 1988 drought reduced corn yields in the U.S. by 40 percent. This event-oriented learning process characterizes the history of drought adjustment and adaptation in the U.S.

Early Responses to Drought

Native Americans learned to either store food for poor years or migrate to wetter areas. The early settlers of the Great Plains in the 1880s and 1890s brought their Eastern preconceptions of drought and climate. A combination of boosterism, mythical bounty, and the belief in climate amelioration moderated concerns about drought. The settlers soon faced severe drought in the early 1890s and realized that drought was a part of farming in semi-arid regions, or for that matter, anywhere. A new emphasis on drought adjustment focused on creating an agricultural system that could be productive in even the worst droughts. Self-described experts propagated numerous dry farming techniques; some were useful techniques. However, faulty assumptions and poor science characterized many methods. A series of wet years in the 1920s, a renewed faith in the ability to overcome droughts, and good commodity prices resulted in record amounts of land under the plow by the 1930s.

More than any other event, the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s influenced Americans’ perceptions and knowledge of drought. Ill-defined, the Dust Bowl generally was considered to be the southern portion of the Great Plains, and its greatest extent was in 1935-1936. Much of the rest of the country also experienced drought during the 1930s, but the stories of dust storms that required headlights during the middle of the day, fences covered by drifting sand, and the massive out-migration captured public and government attention. The enormous topsoil loss to wind erosion, continuous crop failures, and widespread bankruptcies suggested that rural America had failed to adapt to drought and the semi-arid environment. Climate was still considered the main culprit, but socioeconomic factors and poor technology also were given serious attention. The Dust Bowl experience probably had the greatest influence on the evolution of drought policy and adjustment techniques in America.

Some argued that a core cause of the Dust Bowl was not really drought, but the economic system that put the farmers at risk in a marginal environment. Worster (1979) said: “What brought them to the region was a social system, a set of values, an economic order… capitalism.” Regardless of the socioeconomic cause, the Dust Bowl heralded a new era in drought management and relief.

Federal Drought Response

Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government took an increasing role in drought management and relief. The Agricultural Adjustment Administration and its successors provided direct financial relief to farmers during the Depression. The federal government created the Soil Erosion Service in 1933, later known as the Soil Conservation Service. Perhaps no other single federal program or organization had a greater impact on farmers’ abilities to manage the drought hazard. Roosevelt’s Prairie States Forestry Project (1934-1942) planted over 230,000 acres of shelterbelts in the Plains states purportedly to reduce the effects of desiccating winds and periodic drought. The Bankhead-Jones Tenant Act of 1937 allowed federal purchase of nearly a million acres of marginal farmland for restoration into grass. The Federal Crop Insurance Program had its beginnings in 1938. Federal agencies constructed water resource and irrigation projects. The list goes on. Conclusively, the Dust Bowl and its aftermath formalized the federal role in drought management and relief efforts.

The federal remedy seemed to make a difference during subsequent droughts. The Southern Plains drought of the 1950s actually affected a greater area than the 1930s droughts. Yet, the region did not return to the distressing, tragic conditions of two decades earlier (Hurt, 1981). Federal agencies developed more programs. The Farm and Home Administration provided production emergency loans to some farmers. The Soil Bank program allowed farmers to enter land, much of which was erosion- and drought-prone, into acreage reserves in 1956. Many farmers implemented technological adjustments developed under federal and state research efforts. Special tillage equipment and practices, fertilizer, irrigation and drought-resistant grain helped to make farmers less exposed to drought.

Perhaps the best test of the socioeconomic and technological drought mitigation efforts came during the extreme and widespread drought of 1988. The drought caused a 31 percent reduction in U.S. grain production. Total losses and costs of the 1988 drought topped $39 billion (Riebsame et al., 1991). Rural communities and businesses saw income and sales decrease as the agricultural sector suffered. Major cities and small towns coped with dry wells and depleted rivers. Farmers received federal and state disaster aid. The Federal Crop Insurance Corporation provided $3 billion in payments, severely stressing its resources. Overall, federal and state response to the 1988 drought showed mixed results. One thing seemed clear—crisis management remained the norm, rather than anticipatory planning.

Many innovative drought adjustments during 1988 came from those who suffered the most—farmers and rural communities. Farmers sold livestock or stored grain (prices are often higher during a drought) besides taking advantage of federal drought relief and crop insurance. Others used special tillage techniques to reduce erosion. Some farmers replanted their grain fields to forage. Others used the same fields for forage. Drought forced many farmers to diversify their operations. Refinancing of loans was common. Many farmers took advantage of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The program allowed farmers to obtain payments if they retired highly erodible farmland for 10 years and planted the land into grass or trees. Federal officials allowed farmers and ranchers to cut hay on a portion of their CRP lands during the drought. Farmers and ranchers became more flexible in their management decisions. The 1988 drought reinforced the tenet that local people may be the best source for effective drought adjustments.

Significant progress in drought planning and mitigation is occurring at the federal, state and local levels. Passage of the National Drought Policy Act in 1998 created the National Drought Policy Commission with the task of reviewing over 80 drought-related programs. The Commission’s 2000 report emphasized the need for drought planning. In the 1980s, only a few states had formalized drought plans. Today, nearly all states have drought plans. In addition, many individual counties and cities possess their own drought plans. The 1995 establishment of the National Drought Mitigation Center (NDMC) at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln was another important event in drought planning and mitigation. The NDMC created the premier Internet clearinghouse for information on drought monitoring, planning, mitigation and education.

Coping with Future Droughts

Drought prediction seems the answer to farmers’ annual crop selection dilemma. Borchert (1971) noted an apparent 21-year cycle of drought in the grassland region of the central U.S. Researchers continue their efforts to unravel the many variables involved in climate prediction. As would be expected, the shorter the prediction interval, the more accurate the prediction. Unfortunately, most long-term climate predictions are still too spatially variable and unreliable to be of significant value in making economic decisions. However, prog ress has been made in estimating drought occurrence and timing. For example, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation may be a precursor of drought in some areas. Global warming has the possibility to obscure the prospect of reliable climate predictions even more. Recent reports (2007-2008) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) continue to detail the many consequences, including drought, of a warming atmosphere on rural and agricultural regions. The IPCC notes that climate prediction models continue to improve, but that the models’ abilities to predict shortterm weather fluctuations for small areas is limited.

Perhaps of greater worth to rural Americans is the current capacity to detect and monitor drought in its early stages. Early recognition of potential drought conditions can give policy makers and resource managers the extra time needed to adjust their management strategies. Information on soil moisture conditions can help farmers with planting and crop selection, seeding rate, fertilization, amount of irrigation and harvest time decisions. Early drought warning systems can aid communities in decisions related to water storage and release from reservoirs, implementation of water conservation measures, and obtainment of outside sources of water. Notwithstanding some disadvantages, the Palmer Drought Severity Index and other indexes can monitor potential drought conditions. The key is to provide reliable information as early as possible.

Despite the progress in drought mitigation techniques, monitoring effects and increased awareness of the drought hazard, the country remains vulnerable to drought. Although the ability to cope with mild to moderate droughts has improved significantly, the exposure to severe or extreme drought is still high. Continuing susceptibility to drought may, in part, be the result of a lack of planning. Researchers and officials continue to call for the development of a national drought plan. Regardless of their success or failure, drought will remain an enduring element of the rural American landscape.

— David M. Diggs

See also

• Agronomy; Dryland Farming; Weather

References

• Borchert, John. “The Dust Bowl in the 1970s.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 61, no. 1 (1971): 1-22.
• Boken, Viendra K., Arthur P. Cracknell, and Ronald L. Heathcote. Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study. Oxford University Press, 2005
• IPCC. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2008. World Meteorological Organization (and by the United Nations Environment Programme, http://www.ipcc.ch/ about/index.htm (5 February 2008).
• National Drought Policy Commission. Preparing for Drought in the 21st Century. Washington D.C.: National Drought Policy Commission, 2000. http://govinfo.library. unt.edu/drought/finalreport/fullreport/pdf/reportfull. pdf (5 February 2008).
• Riebsame, William E., Stanley Changnon, Jr., and Thomas Karl. Drought and Natural Resources Management in the United States: Impacts and Implications of the 1987-1989 Drought. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.
• Saarinen, Thomas. Perception of the Drought Hazard on the Great Plains. Research Paper no. 106. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1966.
• University of Nebraska. “National Drought Mitigation Center”. 2007. University of Nebraska, Lincoln, http:// www.drought.unl.edu/ (15 February 2008).
• Wilhite, Donald (editor). Drought: A Global Assessment. Routledge Hazards and Disasters Series. Routledge Press, 2000.
• Wilhite, Donald. Drought Assessment, Management, and Planning: Theory and Case Studies. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1993.
• Worster, Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford University Press, 1979.