N. Utah fields withering away

HOWELL, Box Elder County — Bart Sorensen squats in a dry, brown field to check the damage. He sadly eyes the brown, skimpy grass, dusty soil and multitudes of grasshoppers.

"There's no feed," he says.

"You see how the grasshoppers ate the grass and dropped the heads of the grass right on the ground. I mean, just like you've turned a herd of cows in here, eating, the grasshoppers have done to it."

Normally, by mid-August this field would be knee-high, or maybe even up to one's waist, with lush grasses so dense that it's hard to walk through. It should be prime for fall grazing when the cattle come down from their summer range on the nearby low mountains.

But this year, a combination of a hailstorm, insects and drought have reduced the field to dust and short brown grass. And multitudes of grasshoppers.

"It's going to hurt us," he says. "We're not going to have the feed up on the ranges around here. . . . We've had to buy a lot more feed."

Sorensen is a farmer in this small community about 15 miles south of the Idaho border, raising alfalfa and grain on 1,000 acres of irrigated land and 800 acres that are not irrigated. In addition, the family farm includes 200 dairy cows, 150 beef cattle and about 1,000 feeder cattle.

Like most other farmers in the region, Sorensen needs another job besides the enormous effort of farming. He drives a school bus in the winter, supplementing his income "to try and keep going farming and ranching."

"Our grain is kind of a disaster this year — combination of the frost, hail, and then the drought besides that."

On the year's first crop of alfalfa, the yield was only a half or a third of what it should have been. On the second crop, yields were a bit better. "But now we're starting to run out of water," he said.

Many farmers use water from the Blue Creek Spring Reservoir. But that's not enough. They depend on rainstorms to grow the grasses and rain has been lacking.

Adding to the water woes, cattle-raisers must haul feed and water to the cows on the range. That's expensive.

This adds a cost of about $10 to the cost of raising each cow or calf. But so many ranchers are distressed throughout the West that many are selling their herds. That has depressed beef prices.

"On your calves this year, they're looking around 20 cents off (per pound) what they were a year ago," Sorensen said.