Garden City ? Cattleman Ron Pettz buys 75 gallons of water for every quarter he dumps in the meter at the Liotta water tower.

It takes 16 quarters for him to fill the water tank on his truck and trailer for a single load. Each day two to four times a day he drives the 32 miles from his Deerfield farm to the Conservation Reserve Program land in Wichita County where he keeps his cattle on grazing donated by another farmer.

He figures he uses 50 to 60 quarters a day to buy enough water for his herd of 165 cows, plus their 165 calves.

“A person has to do what a person has to do we just feel thankful we can do this,” he said.

But on Monday, he left his cattle-watering chores to his wife to come to Garden City for a chance to talk to U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback and top state and federal agriculture officials to convince them to extend the CRP grazing beyond the Aug. 31 cutoff date.

Common complaint

It became a familiar chorus from cattle producers at each stop in a day-long tour, which included a feed yard near Scott City, a Lane County farm, a grain elevator in Ness City, a nearly dry lake in Hodgeman County and an implement dealer in Finney County.

At each stop Bill Fuller, state director for the USDA Farm Service Agency, told ranchers he was pushing to extend that deadline. He is also trying to end the 25 percent loss in payment to owners of CRP land who graze their own cattle on their land. Under the present rules, CRP owners can donate the grazing to other farmers without any loss of government CRP subsidy.

Fuller said the tour confirmed for him that the extension he’s seeking is needed.

Tour participants stopped at Farleigh Feedyard near Scott City where manager Jerry Kuckelman told them that the drought, coupled with the rising feed grain prices, is costing them more to put weight on cattle.

“We have a long battle ahead of us,” he said.

Mean Mother Nature

One of their biggest concerns, Kuckelman said, is water. The wells at the feedyard were down 30 percent from a year ago as farmers across the county pump more water to irrigate their crops.

“Mother Nature can be mean, and she has been mean,” he said.

Scott County farmer Jon Buehler said he lost money for three years in a row.

“We are desperate out here, we really are,” he said.

At a stop at the Don Hineman farm in Dighton, the group got a close up look at some CRP ground that Hineman was grazing. He put his cattle on it Aug. 7 and will have to take them off of it in three weeks under the government rule.

“I’m glad to have it for a little time, but it is not the full answer,” he said.

Normally, he grazes his cattle this time of year on stubble from harvested crops, but there isn’t much of that this dry year.

“This fall, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said.

Brownback told farmers at each stop that he expected a federal drought disaster declaration for Kansas within a week and that the Congressional delegation was working together to put together a drought bail-out bill later this year. He was less confident about passing the latter.

Harold Klaege, state conservationist with USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, said Kansas now has 2.7 million acres enrolled in the CRP program.

But Klaege and others fear that all the bare cropland especially if there isn’t enough moisture to get a wheat crop established this fall will cause significant soil erosion come spring.

“Wait until next year when it blows. You’ll see it in Wichita and Topeka,” he said of the dust clouds.

He said no-till cropping practices are the way this land should be farmed, but that is not going to happen in one year.

“One good rain is not going to alleviate the drought,” Klaege said. “It took years to get here.”