wfn.org | Getting Drought Relief to Farmers Is Task of Ecumenical Coalition

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

99295 
3-September-1999 
 
    Getting Drought Relief to Mid-Atlantic Farmers Is Task 
    Of New Ecumenical Coalition 
 
                             by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Elder Vera Bonar Page has heard it all by now: how low 
the wells have gone, how the pastures have dried up, how the exhibit hall 
at the Mineral County fair - usually stocked full of tomatoes and corn and 
squash - looked sparse this year. 
 
    And that's all true.  But what worries her most is how tired the 
farmers seem. 
 
    "They've been hauling water and hauling hay ... beyond what they would 
ever do in the winter.  There's no time for fence-mending or gearing up to 
chop corn, do maintenance on the equipment, grease it up," said the 
longtime elder at the Burlington Union Church near Keyser, the county's 
seat, and an employee of the federally-funded Farm Service Agency. 
 
    "The cattle have to have water and they have to have food," she said, 
pointing out that both are in short supply.  Some farmers have already 
broken into the winter food stash since cattle are unable to graze in the 
dead and brown pastures.  "They've got to cross that off their lists before 
they can move onto the next thing." 
 
    The two inches of rain that fell in West Virginia last week was the 
biggest downpour some parts of the state have gotten since May.  In Hardy 
County, which borders Mineral, rainfall tallied about 4/10 of an inch in 
July and, maybe, 6/10 of an inch in June. 
 
    That's hardly enough to salvage the parched crops withered in the 
fields - the hay that never grew tall enough to mow, the corn that still 
stands burned on the stalk.  According to the Clinton Administration, 
counties in West Virginia, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio and even 
states with ocean-front property like Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and New 
Jersey, are drier than they've been in the last 105 years. 
 
    Which is why the Family Farm Drought Relief Coalition (FFDRC) is 
currently forming itself - to offer both immediate and long-term assistance 
to farmers in the mid-Atlantic states now hard-hit by drought.  "It's 
important," said Stan Noffsinger, manager of the emergency services 
ministries unit of the Church of the Brethren (COB) General Board and 
initiator of the meeting that brought the ecumenical disaster teams 
together, "for the religious community to step up to the plate and support 
the family farm and those who are affected by the plight of farm families 
 ... laborers, hired help, migrants." 
 
    Signing on so far with the COB are the Christian Reformed World Relief 
Committee, Lutheran Disaster Response, Mennonite Disaster Response (MDS), 
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA), the United Methodist Committee on 
Relief and the Orphan Grain Train, which is also a Lutheran initiative. 
Church World Service (CWS), the relief arm of the National Council of 
Churches in New York City, will coordinate the group's work and 
fund-raising. 
 
    Moving hay and grain from more well-watered western states to the 
parched east is the immediate task FFDRC has set for itself, using trucking 
companies, railroads and volunteer drivers. MDS will lead that effort since 
its congregations are well-represented in the farm belt and it has already 
been moving hay for the past three weeks. 
 
    There's an educational component too: ensuring farmers know what help 
is available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Small 
Business Administration, the Farm Service Agency, etc., and interpreting 
the plight of the small farmers to U.S. churchgoers. 
 
    No matter how tall an order all of that may be, the next task is, 
admittedly, the harder one - getting farmers to talk about what troubles 
them so that FFDRC may give small emergency grants for equipment and animal 
feed bills, or, even more personally, medical or emotional care. 
 
    "In the Mennonite and COB, that's almost a farmer-to-farmer thing. 
They'll be out front identifying folks with needs.  The only way to do that 
is through the churches these folks belong to," said Bob Arnold of CWS, who 
said the first referrals will probably come through churches heavily 
represented in farm communities, where the mainline churches, such as 
Methodists and Presbyterians, are less visible.  "There's just not much 
assistance for emergency management, other than loans.  And farmers don't 
want to go into any more debt. 
 
    "The church is the unique and logical institution to respond." 
 
    It just means knowing who is living on the economic edge.  Sometimes 
that's easy to figure out, but other times, it isn't. 
 
    The Rev. Bill Roberts in tiny - and dangerously dry - Cameron, a teeny 
mountain town near Moundsville, W.Va., is familiar with the fierce privacy 
typical of a mountain culture that, for good reason, distrusts outsiders 
who've historically exploited coal and mineral rights, and even worse, the 
people.  Though most of the mines are gone and factories along the river 
are unreliable, Roberts said families stay close-mouthed about financial 
problems: they'll just fish and hunt more than usual. 
 
    "They don't look to the government for help.  They're independent of 
the presbytery.  They depend on each other.  If Ronnie owns the bailer and 
somebody else owns the plough, they have to stick together," he said, 
adding that the 20 or so parishioners in Cameron's one-room Presbyterian 
church seldom farm full-time, but do rely on their gardens to stock the 
cupboards.  "Within the last year, I've gotten one family to come to me for 
counseling. 
 
    "Something really serious needs to happen to go outside the family or 
off the ridge." 
 
    That's not so far from the profile of the rural farmer who, as Page 
puts it: "They just keep a lot inside. That's all." 
 
    There's a reason for that.  Independence is the trademark of the 
profession.  But such stern self-reliance makes it harder to ask for help. 
 
    "Nobody wants to be considered in bad shape.  That's an admission that 
something is wrong, that they've somehow made the situation worse: they 
over grazed last year, or, they're not a good manager and sold the hay at 
the wrong time, when they should have held it," said Page.  "This is one of 
the last places where you work and there's no one to tell you what to do. 
You're able to make choices, free of a boss looking over your shoulder 
every day. 
 
    "But you have to live with the consequences." 
 
    The church may be one of the few places where farmers feel comfortable 
expressing some of that shame or anger or depression, according to a pastor 
who serves in a rural West Virginia town where some folks may be facing 
bankruptcy if there's no help. "They don't tell this stuff to extension 
agents.  They may talk finances and they certainly talk production issues. 
But mention health issues or how the kids are doing ... it's going to be 
pretty tough to get a conversation going with that," said one pastor. 
 
    The Rev. Bruce Macbeth is of that mind himself. 
 
     Pastor of the Moorefield Presbyterian Church for 28 years - in a town 
near the border of Appalachian Maryland - and treasurer of the ecumenical 
ministerial association there, Macbeth says that "word gets to me" about 
who is hurting and why.  Part of the reason why, he admits, is suffering 
inflicted by three major floods in the last 14 years has made it easier to 
talk about the drought that is hitting the county's chicken and grain 
industry hard. 
 
    "We've been hit so hard by floods around here ... the education our 
farmers got was to ask for help," he said.  "Some of these farmers went 
through a great deal of depression.  They've been flooded numerous times." 
 
    Some of the help was emotional.  Some was financial.  The PDA floated 
the Moorefield Ministerial Association a $10,000 grant to assist families 
in dire need in four counties: Grant, Hardy, Pendleton and Hampshire. 
 
    The Presbytery of Upper Ohio Valley - which encompasses nine counties 
in northwestern West Virginia and two in Ohio - is the only presbytery so 
far to apply for drought relief assistance through PDA for its newly formed 
Drought Relief Task Force.  Farmers there are needing deeper or new wells 
and hay to feed the livestock, typical across the state.  "Instead of two 
or three cuttings of hay, they've got one.  Not only that, the livestock 
are being fed this year's hay right now instead of through the winter," 
said presbytery executive the Rev. Robert Houser in Wheeling. 
 
    The task force is looking at the possibilities of coordinating a 
local-level haylift or giving grants to buy and move hay. 
 
     "This is at an early enough stage that we don't know some of the 
answers yet," he said, noting that the group intends to locate hurting 
farmers whether they are Presbyterian or not.  "There's a tendency to 
overlook people who are not Presbyterian.  We tend to think we're here to 
help Presbyterians only: if there aren't Presbyterians involved, then 
[somehow] it isn't our disaster to deal with." 
 
    Searching for a way to pool ecumenical resources to reach whoever needs 
help is a familiar mantra to Noffsinger who put the FFDRC idea into motion 
by convening the ecumenical group - some with deep ties in the farm belt, 
others with fewer - at the COB Service Center in New Windsor, Md., a city 
that is no stranger to the lack of rain.  "It was so beautiful: the faith 
community coming together, [which is] bigger than any one of us. ... 
 
    "We'd love to take it all on [the crisis of the family farm].  But it 
is better to take a more narrow section where we're experienced and do 
well, rather than taking too much on and not doing anything well," said 
Noffsinger. 

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