Last year's drought keeps breaking its own records

Agricultural losses from the historic dry spell will jump past the original $5.2 billion estimate, and crop insurance indemnity payments in Texas have set a record with $2.5 bil- lion in claims paid out through March 12, agriculture officials say.

"As time went on, yields got worse and worse," said David Anderson, a Texas Agri­Life Extension Service livestock economist who helped calculate the original estimate in August, which itself set a record. "I expect livestock and crop losses to get worse."

Travis Miller, an extension service soil and crop sciences specialist who contributed to the August estimate, also believes the real impact is greater than $5.2 billion. More cotton acreage was abandoned than had been estimated last summer, and rising feed costs caused greater livestock losses, he said.

"It's hard to imagine the damage it's caused across the state," said Miller, who serves on the Governor's Drought Preparedness Council. "It's nothing anybody alive has seen before."

The USDA crop production summary for 2011 showed that only about 57 percent of the 21.3 million acres of crops planted in Texas were harvested. In 2010, a strong year for crop production, almost 87 percent of the planted acreage was harvested.

The only other states where harvests fell drastically short of plantings last year were also scorched by drought. In Oklahoma, about 68 per- cent of the planted acreage was harvested. In New Mexico, it was less than 60 percent.

Irrigation a necessity

Cotton harvests were especially weak in Texas last year, with less than 41 percent of the planted acres deemed productive. Sorghum production, meanwhile, fell from 119 million bushels in 2010 to 56.4 million bushels last year, the USDA said.

Steve Verett, executive vice president of the Plains Cotton Growers, said cotton producers who don't irrigate - about half of his membership's 4.6 million acres of production - were lucky to get any production. Even farmers with irrigation suffered losses as the drought continued.

"To get above average yields, you still need rainfall. Irrigation by itself is not enough," Verett said. "Thank goodness most row crops are covered by crop insurance."

Crop insurance vital

Officials call crop insurance a vital tool that helps farmers buffer losses from droughts, floods and other natural disasters. A government subsidy helps keep premiums low, but farmers choose the amount of coverage they want.

Mark Lamon, who grows wheat, cotton, corn and sunflowers in Medina County, said coverage never makes up for what a decent crop would produce, but it's enough to keep farmers going.

"It does provide an effective safety net," he said.

Nationally, agricultural insurance companies made almost $10.3 billion in crop insurance indemnity payments as of March 12, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency reports.

That's a record, passing the old record of nearly $8.7 billion in 2008, and could rise slightly before all claims are reviewed, said a spokesperson for National Crop Insurance Services, a trade group.

Texas' $2.5 billion in indemnity payments from 2011 is the top in the country, beating the second-highest, North Dakota, by almost $1 billion.

It's also Texas' highest total since 1989, when record-keeping began.

wpack@express-news.net