I get a pretty annoyed with these reports about the "drought". We were in a horrible drought LAST year, but we're ready to cut our hay any time now...and it looks like we're all set to have the highest yield in at least five years, maybe ever. Heck, I'm more worried right now about getting this year's hay put up before it gets rained on! We called the farmer that we've always gotten most of our hay from last night, and so far, he's set for a good year - as always with farming, that could still change, but that's nothing new. Farming is always a day-by-day operation and that's nothing new. Yet, on that drought map on that video, it showed us in the red area, the hardest hit. It's been many years since our run-over pond has been full to its dam, but it is this year. It takes a lot of rain to do that.
I suspect there's some mismatched figures at play here. Charlotte once again rates as the top city in the USA for relocating to. Yuck. That means the demand for water to be pulled out of the local resevoirs is the highest ever - not to mention the traffic messes, increased polution in our area, etc. So, yes, there are drinking water shortages - for the builders who can't get building permits to continue building their McMansions surrounding Charlotte. And, the McMansion-ites can't run their lawn sprinklers daily as they'd like, poor dears, how WILL they cope... Some of the problems is from lower than desired resevoir levels, but some of it is because there isn't enough infrastructure in place to move the drinking water around - so my property taxes go up and up and up and up. I wonder if that's the data used to determine part of the red areas...because we've had more rain this spring than in the last several springs. As far as hay prices, as long as I've had horses, we've had periodic scares about hay shortages - I even remember hearing about them when I was a kid and my dad had cows. I suspect we'll never again see $3 per bale hay as the normal price again here. The price of diesel fuel isn't helping, but one of my biggest beefs is that the government is subsidizing the production of ethanol - and that inflated (and government-subsidized) corn price has taken land from soybean and hay production and put it into corn, and much of that corn has been taken away from food production. It makes NO sense at all to produce an alternate fuel that consumes more energy during production than it produces, especially when much of the world is experiencing food shortages. That's just nuts, and it's a real problem...but it's not drought-related. As far as the number of horses going to auction, there have always been a lot of them. I don't have any numbers, but I don't think the drought is the only reason, probably not the biggest reason, and certainly not the reason for the low prices. In the past, there were meat buyers at the auctions, willing to pay on-the-hoof prices for horses that didn't sell. That kept the minimum prices about $400-800 or so. Since there are no slaughterhouses running in the USA, I think that explains why unwanted horses are selling so cheaply, or not selling at all. This is a horrible, horrible short-term condition, but HOPEFULLY, word will get around so that everyone breeding just any old grade horse to any other neighborhood horse will be given cause to reconsider. In the past, with a convenient way to dispose of unwanted horses, we could conveniently ignore the horses that went for meat. It's time now to address the REAL problem - too many horses being bred. Let's not blame that on drought. But drought? I think the media needs to find a new subject to whine about, and not conveniently lump a host of issues on a single "act of God". Last year, there was a real drought, and maybe a few areas of the country will experience drought this year. I think most of the problems we are seeing this year are human-made problems and it would be nice if we all woke up and saw the difference. There are plenty of other worries I can find to wring my hands over, but drought isn't one of them this year. That's least year's news, and I'm thankful for all the good rain we're getting...even the 1" we got in a very scary thunderstorm last night. Karen Thomas, NC
