wfn.org | Churches Trying to Find Ways of Helping Hard-Hit Farmers in

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Rain-Starved Areas 
13-August-1999 
99260 
 
    Churches Trying to Find Ways of Helping 
    Hard-Hit Farmers in Rain-Starved Areas 
 
    "It is terrible dry here," stoic old-timer allows 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Mike McClung isn't kidding when he says he hopes it rains 
on the West Virginia State Fair. 
 
    It usually does, much to the disappointment of the thousands of West 
Virginians who swarm into Lewisburg every year with quilts, hogs and 
tomatoes in tow, hoping for a ribbon. 
 
    This year, McClung is counting on it. 
 
    It hasn't rained much in Lewisburg since mid-May. For McClung - a 
Presbyterian whose grandsons are his family's 10th generation of farmers - 
that means he's only gotten 35 bales of hay out of his alfalfa field to 
feed his cattle this winter. Normally he gets 800. But pastures in southern 
West Virginia, where McClung farms, are so dry and brown - just like those 
in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Virginia - that cattle can't munch 
the grass. What's more, the corn, soybeans and tomatoes are shriveling up. 
 
    McClung is luckier than most, he says, because he was able to pull 600 
bales of clover out of his still-green bits of pasture around Lewisburg. So 
he's not pressed to sell off his stock early, like plenty of farmers are 
because they have no hope of fattening them up for sale this fall, because 
food and water are in such short supply. 
 
    Drought is a problem with no solution. Short of rain, that is. 
 
    Longtime farmers agree with McClung, who says: "It will rain. The 
question is when." 
 
    Wells get dug deeper. Hay gets shared. But folks still go under. 
Experts in West Virginia are saying things like: It will take the rain from 
three inland hurricanes to get West Virginia wet enough to refill the 
state's record-low rivers, green-up the pastures for the calves and 
replenish the dwindling water table. They predict that 1,000 to 2,000 fewer 
farmers will be in the beef and dairy businesses in West Virginia this time 
next year. 
 
    Ordinary folks use less drama to make the point. Eightysomething 
Presbyterian farmer Virgil Wilson, in tiny Ronceverte, near the state's 
border with Virginia, says simply, "It is terrible dry here." 
 
    That's why disaster-relief staff from mainline churches are gathering 
on Aug. 26 in New Windsor, Md., at the invitation of the Church of the 
Brethren (COB). Not because they have answers. The denomination's emergency 
response unit is smack in the middle of the "drought belt,"where water is 
being voluntarily rationed and reservoirs keep going lower. But because - 
despite years of experience with floods and hurricanes, tornadoes, and the 
like - they know that figuring out ways to respond to a drought is so hard. 
 
    "Pastoral care," says native West Virginian Bob Arnold, a longtime 
staffer with Church World Service (CWS), the relief arm of the National 
Council of Churches in New York City, "is ultimately what the church is 
best at. Repair, rebuilding, we can't come in with big money. And we can't 
make the kinds of loans that [farmers] need to keep their businesses from 
collapsing ... 
 
    "[So, the question is:] What does the church have the capacity to do 
with a farm crisis, other than pastoral care?" 
 
    Some ideas under consideration include a small grant water assistance 
program to help drill wells, because little public aid is available for the 
purpose. It has even been suggested that the church ought to coordinate a 
"hay lift" between distant, better-off farmers and those baking in the dry 
spots - something like the one run by rail last year by the Disciples of 
Christ to parched farms in Florida. It seems that one sure place to begin 
is salvaging livestock so that farmers can sell them in October ... but the 
question is, How? 
 
     Right now, CWS facilitators and COB staff are talking with farmers and 
extension agents about what needs exist ,and how churches may begin to 
help. That's not always easy to do, because farmers are notorious for being 
fiercely independent and for asking for help for the guy over the next 
hill, who is, they say, probably worse off. 
 
    Federal programs kick in to assist farmers economically. But they often 
do so with low-interest loans. According to Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
Disaster Assistance coordinator Stan Hankins, grants are what they need, 
unless they are among the few who have cash resources put aside from the 
good years. 
 
    "I am here to tell you, this is very critical," said Stan Noffsinger, 
manager of the emergency services ministries unit of the Church of the 
Brethren General Board. "What's difficult is that most of us are so 
separated from the food chain that we don't see the drought impacting us. 
We just go to the grocery store and pick our food off the shelves. 
 
    "But it will." 
 
    The Reverend Judy Weger sees that impact first-hand in her two parishes 
in rocky central West Virginia. There, the drought comes on top of record 
flooding of just three short years ago, when much of Pendleton County's 
topsoil washed into the North Branch of the South Fork of the Potomac 
River.  Those rains hit the economies hard in tiny mountain towns like 
Circleville and Franklin, where farms are the main source of income for 
more than half of the residents. The other half also rely on farm-related 
support, if only a family garden. 
 
      "People are selling off what cattle they can't afford to feed, hoping 
to have enough money to start over next year," said Weger, noting that more 
fortunate families are moving cattle to other pastures higher in the 
mountains. "One family was considering selling off one herd in hopes of 
making enough to feed the rest. But it rained just in time." 
 
    She paused, then added: "But there's been a cattle truck down at their 
place ... and I'm not sure what's happening." 
 
    The Rev. Bob Osborne sees similar stress much further east in what West 
Virginians call the state's Panhandle. "People here are really worried 
about their wells," he said, noting that watering the yard, washing the car 
and even long baths and showers are forbidden for now. "And they're saying 
they've never seen it so dry. There's been a few showers in the last two 
weeks, but no where near enough to make a difference." 
 
    One parishoner who farms, he said, has totally given up on his corn 
crop and is giving his apple harvest a 50 percent shot. "He's given up on 
the rest of his crops to keep the apples going," said Osborne, adding that 
finding ways to haul water to his orchard is taking up his time now. "But 
he's still figuring on taking a pretty big hit." 
 
    At Salem Presbyterian Church outside Lewisburg, the Rev. Bill Dent 
tells a slightly more optimistic story, though plenty of his parishoners 
are, as he says, "pretty anxious." Just two weeks ago, he could see 20 
steers in the field outside the manse window. "There are none now." Dent 
said his neighbor sold them off - and was fortunate enough to make an $800 
profit. 
 
    "But the pasture is dry," he said. "The pond is at a scummy low level. 
He got out at a good time." 
 
    Dent said that the state's been living with a water deficit since last 
July - with no normal rain or snowfall. "West Virginia in many places is in 
dire straits. I've heard that on the radio as much as from direct contact," 
he said. "I've got one farmer who says to me: `The well hasn't gone dry. 
But if it does, I've got a tremendous amount of water to haul.'" 
 
    Noffsinger - who grew up in farm country near Wichita, Kan. - is 
sympathetic, and that's why he's pushing denominational relief personnel to 
wrack their brains to try to develop viable ministries. 
 
    "In the Dakotas," he said, referring to repeatedly flooded farmers 
there, "there's too much water. And here, we don't have any. It is bound to 
impact us all ... 
 
    "This is a time for us to be serious about thinking: what should our 
response be as a faith community to a shortage of God-given, breath of 
life, water?" 

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