For Jimmie Lee Shaw, fuel expenses have gone up 75% since the U.S. attacked Iran in late February. Shaw farms 2,600 acres of corn, wheat, cotton, and soybeans on his family’s (rented) farmland in Newberry.
He also raises beef cattle, which rely on some of the crops he grows. The full operation drinks about 4,000 gallons of fuel per month.
Shaw used to buy full tankers of fuel for about $15,000, he says. The last fuel he bought was a half-tanker, for about that same price.
Meanwhile, fertilizer has gone from $350 per ton to about $500 per ton.
Farmers in South Carolina are dealing with these kinds of troubles much the same as their counterparts across the country. But farmers here have a third problem that isn’t happening everywhere -- drought.
When I asked Shaw, on almost the last day of April, when was the last time that he saw significant rainfall, his answer was March 18, more than five weeks earlier. Since that conversation, rain has landed on Newberry and in enough of the state for the South Carolina Forestry Commission to lift it’s statewide burn ban on May 1.
But drought conditions in South Carolina, despite some rainfall to close out April and open May, have not improved conditions in the ground. The U.S. Drought Monitor’s latest map, as of April 30, has every county in South Carolina in a state of at least severe drought. Most of South Carolina is in a state of extreme drought, which is one degree worse than severe; parts of Beaufort, Jasper, Allendale, Hampton, and Colleton counties are in a state of exceptional drought, which is the highest level of drought.
Those conditions are visible on farms in the Upstate and Midlands. In Lexington, Loren Lindler’s hay fields are barely the length of her fingers. The blades of Bermuda grass that stretch across much of her family farm’s 200 acres should be at least up to her shins.
Lindler Farm grows hay to feed their beef cattle and to supply about 40 ranchers in the area with feed for their horses and other animals. But right now, the farm is relying on bales of hay grown last year. This year’s crop, Lindler says, is getting close to being unsalvageable.
This time last year, the state’s weather patterns were extremely similar to where they have been this spring. Lindler says her farm was salvaged by some late-season rainfall that brought in what was needed in the nick of time.
She prays to see more rain, but she also prays to not see a repeat of last year, because she is aware that relying on luck is not a good business strategy.
Not all farms in South Carolina are especially worried about the weather right now, though. At Wild Hope Farm -- a 12-acre organic farm in Chester -- manager Ben Dubard says the drought has actually been good for the vegetables.
Dubard says vegetables like lettuce and broccoli, tomatoes and fennel, ginger and beets grow best in drier climes and cooler weather. Despite a few hot days, much of this spring’s weather has been mild and cool. Wet, soggy days, Dubard says, would probably lead to rotted vegetables.
The caveat is, Wild Hope Farm has a deep well that doesn’t need to be replenished by new rainfall. The farm does not use expensive, large-scale irrigation machinery, nor does it rely on the sky.
Lindler Farm does not use irrigation equipment either, but Shaw Family Farm does. Neither Lindler nor Shaw have much access to a good well, so the clouds are their best source of water.
And while Lindler’s hay fields struggle to get taller, Shaw says he is running out of water to keep everything on his farm going. He says the farm’s diverse array of crops hedges against most of the problems farmers tend to face, but those problems typically come one at a time.
Right now, though, in order to keep things operating at all, Shaw is only able to irrigate 200 of his 2,600 acres of crops. I ask if he thinks he will lose 2,400 acres. If the drought continues, he says, then yes.
But even with the left-right-left that farmers are feeling from international trade wars, international shooting wars, and a serious lack of rainfall, Shaw says farmers here and around the country are only seeing symptoms of a much deeper issue. Farming, he says, has simply become too expensive a business to operate at capacity and make money on crops, even as yields are up.
The problem, Shaw says, is not that there’s no food being grown, it’s that the cost of growing it is outpacing what farmers can charge for their product.
