After a devastating year for crops and wildfires in Colorado, 2013 so far has seen weak snowpack and little reason to be optimistic for critical snow and rain during the crucial period of March, April and early May.

Without some relief, Colorado risks more wildfires, another crop disaster and a stalled state economy.

"We are, at this point, just waiting for spring," said state climatologist Nolan Doesken, head of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University. "If we don't get a big spring storm or two, summer is a problem."

The way hay grower Jason Stanger explains it, the rise and fall of the rain gauge in his field can't be compared to the ripples a drought sends through the farm economy. One goes up and down; the other spreads its effect like a rock in a pond.

Because of the three-year drought, hay now costs about $300 a ton, roughly twice the usual price. Stanger, who represented Standlee Hay Co. at the National Western Stock Show & Rodeo this week, said the long-term impact to his customers costs more than the windfall.

"A drought is bad for everybody eventually," he said. "If the price is too high, our customers are going to sell parts of their herd, and the small customers with a few head of cows or a couple horses are just going to get out of it completely. That costs us more down the road."


So far, long-term weather indicators for the West are inconclusive, Doesken said.

"That's better than an indication for ongoing drought, but it basically says we don't know," he said.

Last year was one of the driest and hottest on record in the state. In early July, 62 of Colorado's 64 counties were declared crop disasters by the governor.

Doesken finds some hope in history.

In 2002, a dry, windy spring killed crops and fueled fires across the state. But farming bounced back somewhat the next year, especially after the March 2003 blizzard left 31 inches of snow on Denver, the most from one storm in 90 years.

Colorado agriculture leaders hope a very wet spring could start recharging subsoil moisture and irrigation wells, but even then it could take years to recover the drought's losses.

Crops won't be the only thing lost. If grass doesn't grow this spring, ranchers will have to find hay or sell off their herds, just as Stanger predicted.

Chris Goemans, who researches and teaches about agricultural economics at CSU, said the state's ability to rely on nondrought states to sell them hay or relocate cattle is crippled by the scope of the current drought. In 2011, when Texas entered a record drought, many operations in Colorado sold off their extra hay, but in 2012 they had to hunt down scarce, expensive supplies.

The cattlemen who sold calves last year inflated their revenue while the high cost for feed cut profits on the remaining herds, so there wasn't as great an overall gain.

Fewer snouts to feed can be good in the short term, but it hurts an operation's bottom line in the long run because those cattle might have fetched more when they matured and provided offspring. And, Goemans said, with more ranchers selling cattle, market prices that are now pretty might not hold up as supply surpasses demand.

He and CSU economics colleague James Pritchett have been surveying farmers and ranchers and taking other economic measurements of the drought. Their report, "Telling the Story — Drought in Colorado," should be available next month.

Shortterm, the drought has the ag industry in straits, but long-term the outlook is strong, Pritchett said. The beef industry is blessed by higher prices, easing decisions to thin herds. And institutional investors are parking money in farm acreage, so land prices and lease rates are good, he said.

Darrell Hanavan, executive director of the Colorado Wheat Administrative Committee, said the drought began for wheat farmers in 2012. So far, it has cost the state's average 2.2 million-acre crop about $150.5 million and counting.

Despite the drought, the last winter-wheat crop had an average yield of 34 bushels an acre, topping the 10-year average of 33.4.

That was lucky, Hanavan said. The dry, warm months early in the year led to the earliest harvest on record, which was completed at about the time it typically would begin, around the first of June.

The wheat matured early, ahead of the hottest, driest conditions.

This year, farmers are hoping for more luck.

"It's hard to be optimistic when they can't get a good forecast from Nolan Doesken and any of the others, who can't give you a good forecast unless they can," Hanavan said. "You just have to hope they're wrong."

Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174, or

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