Wichita ? Farmers and their bankers are waiting to see if Congress passes a drought disaster aid package before they decide how to handle farm loan delinquencies, farm experts say.

“They are waiting to see if it will be enough of a boost, or a Band-Aid, to get them by for another year,” said Forrest Buhler, attorney for the Kansas Ag Mediation Service.

The agency already has noticed that lenders are hesitant to loan more money for spring planting to some troubled farmers, he said.

Farmers are having financial trouble for the second year in a row and an increasing number of them are turning to the Kansas Ag Mediation Services for help dealing with their creditors after defaulting on their farm loans.

The agency has handled 55 such mediation cases in the last quarter, compared to 53 for the same period a year earlier. The last two years represent a substantial spike from the 39 cases the agency had handled before the onset of the drought, Buhler said.

Those cases the agency now has mostly reflect farmers who have had losses for two or three years — farmers that have reached the point where their creditors are no longer willing to work with them, Buhler said.

Just how much the farm delinquency numbers will grow won’t be known until the Farm Service Agency releases its delinquency numbers in two weeks, Buhler said.

Those figures will show delinquencies as of Dec. 31, a good indicator of the farm economy since most farm loans become due at the end of the year once crops are harvested.

Elmore Stout, Baazar, has been raising cattle since 1939 and has seen droughts come and go in the unpredictable Kansas weather cycles, but the 2002 drought is the worst he has seen in 35 years. The pond at left, pictured in March 2002, dried up so quickly that one of his cows sank in the mud trying to reach the edge of the pond for a drink.

The drought aid package is now in the House, where members are debating whether the funds fairly target those farmers who suffered drought losses. The Senate last week approved a $3.1 billion farm package that was revamped to target growers living in counties declared disaster areas during the past two years. The money is wrapped in a $390 billion package financing every government agency, except the Pentagon, for the federal budget year that began Oct. 1.

Early forecasts point to a dismal financial situation for many Kansas farm families.

Battered by a prolonged drought that decimated crops and dried up cattle pastures, the average Kansas farmer last year had a net farm income of $10,147, according to preliminary data compiled by the Kansas Farm Management Assn.

That compares to the five-year average net farm income of $37,162 in Kansas, the agency said. The estimate reflects financial data supplied by more than 2,700 farms and 3,500 families who participate in the KFMA program.

The agency’s initial estimates — final farm income figures won’t be out for another two or three months — show wide variations in farm income throughout the state that mostly mirror the drought’s impacts.

Farmers in northwest Kansas, where the drought even now remains the most severe, showed the state’s lowest net income forecast at $4,000 annually.

Meanwhile, farmers in southwest and northeast Kansas did only slightly better with a net farm income of $5,000, KFMA figures show.

The south-central part of the state had an average net farm income of $9,500, with north-central Kansas farmers averaging a net income of $15,333, according to the forecast.

Farmers in southeast Kansas had comparatively the biggest net farm incomes at about $27,500, the figures show.