Shedding Sweat, Tears and Dollars

By Stephen Koepp

It rained in parts of the Southeast last week, which was no small favor. Farmers and city folks alike looked heavenward, hoping that the clouds would let loose the answer to many weeks of prayers. Much more moisture will be needed to replenish the reservoirs and soften the hard, cracked soil. For this is no ordinary dry spell; it has become the Southeast's most devastating drought in modern times. Beyond the human suffering from empty wells and 100 degrees F heat, which has already claimed more than 40 lives, the lack of rainfall is taking an immense economic toll. The damage so far: an estimated $2 billion in agricultural and other business losses in the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee.

What did flow freely toward the Southeast last week was an outpouring of help and sympathy from more fortunate parts of the U.S. Farmers in the Midwest and other states, who saw how desperately their Southeastern brethren needed fresh hay for their starving cattle, began cutting and shipping bales by the tens of thousands. Says Gayle McFarland, a dairy farmer near Indianapolis: "It was a spontaneous gesture. I'm not any better off financially than they are, but I had an abundance of hay, and I was glad to give it to them." More than 110 Indiana farmers pitched in to supply the Hoosier Hay Express, a 100-boxcar train bound for South Carolina. Dozens of other shipments traveled free of charge by road and air, helped along by volunteer labor and such donated supplies as cotton work gloves for hay loaders and hotel rooms for weary truck drivers.

President Reagan, on a campaign swing for Southern-state Republicans, welcomed a hay shipment from Illinois as it was unloaded in Columbia, S.C., from an Air Force C-141 StarLifter cargo plane. Reagan acknowledged the "tragic proportions" of the situation and promised that the Federal Government would help with "everything that our farm program will allow us to do." Back in Washington, however, Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng announced an aid package that somewhat underwhelmed Southern farmers. Lyng said the Department of Agriculture would relax some of its price-support rules, thus allowing farmers to make emergency use of land and crops that they had agreed to set aside, and he promised that the Farmers Home Administration would offer low-interest loans in some cases. But many Southern farmers, already heavily indebted like their counterparts in the rest of the U.S., & believe that this time they need grants, not loans, to stay in business.

The scarce rainfall, as little as one-third of the normal 20 in. to 30 in. for the year to date, has killed a large portion of the region's summer crops. The USDA estimates that 96% of South Carolina's corn is in poor or very poor condition, along with 68% of the cotton and 52% of soybeans. The drying up of hay and grains has left dairy farmers and cattlemen with little to feed their livestock, forcing many to sell their starving animals to slaughterhouses at money-losing prices. The South Carolina agriculture department estimates that the drought will be the death knell for 1,500 of the state's 27,500 farms. Says Vernon Garner, a Union County, S.C., farmer: "This is as rough as I ever saw it, and I've been here 81 years."

The cruel irony for Southern farmers is that their stubbly crops and sickly cows will scarcely be missed in the U.S. as a whole. Even in an ordinary year, the drought-stricken states provide only about 5% of America's dairy herd, 5% of the corn crop and 3% of wheat. And this year the verdant Midwest is producing the biggest grain surplus in history, one so large that it will cause a critical shortage of storage space. The Southeast does produce, however, almost 40% of the country's broiler chickens, hundreds of thousands of which have died because of the heat. That has pushed the national wholesale price of chickens to about 70 cents a lb., up 15 cents from late June.

The drought-plagued farmers could soon be joined by fellow sufferers in other businesses. In York County, S.C., the Bowater wood-pulp plant, an employer of 1,250 workers, may have to shut down because the Catawba River is getting too low for the safe discharge of waste water. In Georgia, state officials have begun discussing water-rationing plans that would cut off such businesses as car washes and laundries as a first step and then proceed to shut down other industries like breweries, an unpopular move during the hot weather. Last week the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said that barge traffic on the Chattahoochee River in Alabama and Georgia will be halted because water levels have fallen too low. Industries along the waterway will have one week to stock up on such supplies as coal, oil and fertilizer before switching to other methods of hauling, which can be three times as expensive as the barge rate of $8 a ton.

Southerners have tried to lighten their burden with a little levity. Radio station WZYP in Athens, Ala., awarded 1,000 lbs. of ice to the winner of its "How Hot Is It?" contest. The answer: "It's so hot my pigs melted, the grease ran down into the fields and now we're growing french fries." But the South's coping skills will be severely tested in the weeks ahead. Even in normal years, August is a month of little rainfall. South Carolina's water- resources commission predicts a 64% chance that the drought will continue through September. If so, the cost in sweat, tears and dollars will be heavy indeed.

With reporting by Jay Branegan/Washington and Don Winbush/Atlanta