[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 21, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H4376]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           DROUGHT SITUATION

  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I ask permission to speak out of order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from 
Nebraska is recognized for 5 minutes.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call attention to the chart 
that is being presented here which is a drought monitor and reflects 
pretty much the current situation in drought.
  The interpretation of that map would lead you to understand that 
yellow means abnormally dry. The light brown indicates a moderate 
drought. Brown is severe drought. Red is excessive or extreme drought, 
and then black or dark brown is exceptional drought.
  We can see that a large part or the central part of the country is 
either in an extreme or exceptional drought, and that is disturbing, 
but if it only was ongoing for this particular period of time would not 
be so damaging.
  The problem is that this is a 7-year process. We are in the seventh 
year of this drought, and most of those areas we are beginning to see 
some patterns emerge that are very disturbing.
  This, for instance, is what has happened in some of the cities and 
towns in my district and in the State of Nebraska, and you see Lincoln, 
Grand Island, Hastings, Kearney, a minus 27, 28 inches over that period 
of time. Some other areas in the eastern part of the State are 10, 15 
inches down, but if you look at this map, what you will notice is that 
the western two-thirds of Nebraska, the western half of Kansas, western 
half of Oklahoma, much of South Dakota, at times North Dakota, Montana, 
down into Texas, Arizona and New Mexico have experienced this extreme 
drought and this loss of water.
  What that means is the aquifers in most of those areas are declining. 
The reservoirs are down to where they are 25, 30 percent full instead 
of 75 to 100 percent full, and as a result, we are beginning to see a 
pattern that is really very difficult for many of our farmers to 
continue to combat.
  In many cases here, what we have seen is a reduction of herds. As 
water has been insufficient and pastures dry out, you cannot support as 
many cows on that pasture, and you have to sell off some of your brood 
stock, and of course, that has hurt the cattle industry in those areas.
  We have also had to compensate by increased irrigation, and of 
course, that has been very expensive as fuel prices have gone up, as 
fertilizer has increased in costs by triple, sometimes quadruple over 
the last 3 or 4 years. Those input costs have squeezed profit margins 
to the point where many people are not able to survive in farming.
  Also, we have seen some rather major changes in agricultural 
practices, mitigation of drought. For instance, we are now planting 
more sorghum, which requires less water than corn or soybeans. We are 
seeing skip row planting where we are not planting every row that we 
used to because of the lack of water. Using no till, which means that 
you plant the seeds in the ground without actually plowing up the 
ground because that causes water to evaporate so that preserves water.
  So, a lot of changes have been made, but even so, this has not been 
enough. We are still seeing all of those problems.
  What we are seeing is a major loss of equity in many of these 
farmers. They simply had to go to the bank and borrow more money and 
sacrifice whatever equity they have built up in their farm or in their 
ranch. As a result, we are seeing some people now that are teetering on 
the brink to some degree.
  We will see what happens in the rest of this planting season and 
growing season, but things are getting somewhat extreme and somewhat 
dire.
  2002, 2004, we had some drought relief. We are not sure what will 
happen because in those years we were able to get an offset, and we 
went into the conservation security program and secured, roughly, $3 
billion in both of those years for drought mitigation, but this year, 
again we will be asked for an offset. I really do not know where that 
is going to come from.
  We are concerned, and I am simply on the floor here today speaking, 
letting people know, make them aware of this thing that has continued 
now in this year for the better part of 7 years and is really affecting 
the agriculture sector.

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