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Tribune ? There are a lot of dry counties in Kansas this year. But Greeley County is one of the driest.

From August 2001 to this July, just 6.18 inches of rain fell here. That’s 2 inches less than fell during the fabled Dust Bowl years of 1934-1935. Then, there were 8.84 inches.

And though 6 inches is the official county total, not everyone has been so lucky.

“We haven’t gotten 4 inches of rain this year,” said Ann Wainio, manager of the End of the Trail Motel in Tribune, the county seat.

In past years she could look out her window and see dozens of harvest rigs parked along the road waiting to cut wheat.

Not this year. There was nothing to cut.

The drought has driven away others, too.

“We’ve had tourists in the past but haven’t hardly had any this year,” she said. “Haven’t had a full house in over a year.”

‘A disappointing year’

SunBelt Grain Inc. is 14 miles north of Tribune, just off Kansas Highway 27. Inside the company’s tidy offices, young children were coloring open pages on a carpeted floor. More were using watercolors in the next room.

Karen Allen came out of her office and explained that the grain, farming and cattle business started by her father was a family affair. “There are 14 family members involved,” she said proudly.

Fifty-eight drought-stricken Kansas counties have been declared federal disaster areas. Kansas Gov. Bill Graves has put the losses to the state agriculture economy at hundreds of millions of dollars.And the drought persists.Journal-World senior editor Bill Snead spent six days recently visiting areas of Kansas hit hardest by lingering drought. He covered nearly 1,600 miles and interviewed farmers and ranchers, merchants, local officials, retirees and people from many walks of life who’ve been living with extreme heat and very little moisture.The result is “Parched Prairie,” the series that continues today.

Stories¢Part 1: Seeking Salvation from the Drought¢Part 2: Drought sucks life from lakes

She let the numbers tell the story of Sun Belt’s wheat business during one of the driest periods in the county’s history.

The family runs six elevators in Wichita, Wallace and Greeley counties, on the western edge of Kansas.

In a typical year, the elevators handle 1.2 million bushels of wheat. Three years ago, that fell to 980,000 bushels. In 2001, it was 870,000 bushels and this year a paltry 300,000. The 2002 wheat harvest lasted one week half the length of a typical harvest.

In 2001, Kansas farmers produced 328 million bushels of wheat. This year’s production was down by 64 million bushels, to 264 million.

Allen said some neighbors were cutting corn early because the ears weren’t maturing in the withering heat. They were cutting it up for silage.

The elevators expect to handle at least a million fewer bushels than they did a few years ago, she predicted.

“This has been a disappointing year,” Allen said softly. “But if we don’t get some rain, we might look back on 2002 as being a good year.”

In Elkhart

The chairs and booths were going fast at the Downtown Restaurant in Elkhart.

Fred Claassen, sitting under a white straw cattleman’s hat, talked with some farmer friends about his quick trip across the state.

“I saw Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas City yesterday, got back home late last night,” he said over his mashed potatoes. “I had a little over five minutes alone with him and told him about our CRP problem.”

“CRP is not worth nothin’,” a tablemate said, giving his chicken leg a rest. “Government must have green grass back there in Washington, D.C.”

The government’s CRP, or Conservation Reserve Program, has been talked about a lot this year. The program allows farmers to return their cropland to native grasses and not use it for farming, haying or grazing livestock for a period of 10 years. In return, the government pays the land owner an annual fee that coincides with the value of the land.

Farmers in western Kansas counties like Stevens are paid between $22 and $37 per acre, with a $50,000-a-year limit. In Douglas County, where the soil is richer and the land more valuable, the payments range from $45 to $73 an acre. Because of this year’s drought conditions, the government has allowed farmers to use their CRP land to feed their cattle and are paying a reduced rate.

Forrest Lusk, the eatery’s owner, joined the group when a chair emptied. He has the distinction of being the only professional Elvis Presley impersonator running a restaurant in Elkhart.

“If you didn’t have farming, you wouldn’t be able to tell the bad times from the good,” Lusk joked with his customers.

A farmer sitting next to him reminded him that without farming he’d be eating alone.

Lusk said his restaurant business was taking a hit this year. He talked about past years when wheat harvest crews passing through Morton County would run up tabs of $500 and $600. He’s run the Downtown for eight years.

“This year we had one, and their tab was $36,” he said. “And there’s a lot of fuel that wasn’t bought, gifts and flowers that Elkhart people didn’t sell and new furniture that didn’t get sold and those people, including the implement dealers, either eat here or they don’t.”