Dust Bowl Blues
During the big storms, the farmers wage a Sisyphean fight against the sand. When the sand isn’t blowing so hard, many tally up the fields they’ve lost and file crop insurance claims. Fourth-generation Texas farmer Ray Johnston simply decamps to one of his favorite sports bars on the outskirts of Lubbock, where he drinks Coors Light and ponders his situation.
“It’s kinda depressing,” says Johnston, who lost his crop last year to drought and planted 500 acres of cotton again this year, only to watch as eighty-five-mile-per-hour winds brought in a June hailstorm that destroyed his crop. “You sit out here and do all this hard work, and you’ve nothing to show for it.” In the past three years, the amount of land Johnston has been able to farm has declined from 1,200 acres to about 600. He spends between $10,000 and $15,000 per month to irrigate the half that’s left.
The luckier farmers, Ed Moore among them, are surviving in relatively decent financial condition because there are oil derricks on their land that pump up and down nonstop, indifferent to the dust storms. But even those sitting on oil are increasingly reliant on payouts from their crop insurance simply to cover basic operating costs. And water has to be pumped in to keep the pressure of the oil wells constant. In many parts of the country, including Texas and New Mexico, the introduction of water-intensive fracking techniques has worsened this problem. Entire towns are springing up overnight to cater to the oil and natural gas boom. In these areas, population growth and the rise of heavy industry are dramatically increasing pressure on already strained agricultural water supplies.
Hundreds of miles southwest of Ralls, on an alfalfa and small-grains farm near Roswell, New Mexico, Craig Ogden is facing a similar set of challenges—and a similar risk of heartbreak. The 55-year-old relies on irrigation from the Carlsbad Irrigation District to water his 800 acres. But the water allotments are pitifully small. In the past few years, he has been able to grow on only about 10 percent of his acreage.
“We had eighteen months of no rainfall,” says Ogden, whose curly gray hair, ready smile and blue eyes make him look startlingly like the actor Gene Wilder. “We sold a lot of equipment last year. When you’ve had people who have worked for you, it’s hard to let them go.” As he considers what will happen to his family if his farm fails, he starts to cry. “I’ve got college degrees, but with my age it’s going to be hard to find something in this job market.”
Ogden’s friend Matt Rush is also struggling to make ends meet. He recently took a job with the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in Albuquerque, four hours from home. He, too, cries as he considers his prospects. “This is who we are,” he says. “When your livelihood becomes your identity, you can’t just stop.” He pauses, tries to talk himself into optimism. “It’ll take a while to get her Sunday clothes on,” he says, referring to the land. “But she’ll look good. It’s so wide open. You can see the sun coming up and the sun going down. You can see every star in the heavens at night. When it’s green, it just feels so alive to me. When it rains, you can see it in everybody’s faces—how relieved they are. Contributions go up in church on a Sunday after it rains.”
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