August 10, 2005 - From where Cindy Sheehan sits along the dusty road outside of Crawford, Texas nature has left a swath that stretches north-northeast to Crandon, Wisconsin. It is the world’s most productive agricultural land. It is no exaggeration to say that the farms along that path feed the world. Wheat and barley and corn and soybeans flow in a steady stream from America’s heartland to the markets of the world. Yesterday Oklahoma was added to the roll call of states designated drought disaster areas. Nature has kept its rains away. Less than half of the normal rains have fallen on the area since March. The crops are suffering proportionally. Farmers are facing disastrous harvests where the crops sell for less than the cost of bringing in the crop.

From the beginning of human experience farmers have depended on life giving rains. Modern agriculture still is but it is also dependent on another resource and that resource is petroleum. It is not just the source of fuels to run the tractors and the combines to harvest the crops. It is not just the fuels to run the trucks and trains and towboats that carry the crops to market. It is the source of fertilizers to feed the crops, herbicides to control the weeds and pesticides to keep the insect world at bay. Agriculture in the 21st Century depends on nature for the rain and mankind for the oil in equal measure.

From Texas to Oklahoma to Kansas to Missouri, to Illinois and Iowa and Wisconsin nature has failed to bring the rain. That means that the farmer won’t bring in a normal crop and it also means he won’t have the normal income to take to the bank. Mankind has also failed the farmer. It doesn’t take a Nobel Lauriat to see the impact of the record high prices for crude on the drought stricken farmers. Even a hobbyist rancher cutting brush outside of Waco should be able to figure it out. Lean harvests and lean pocketbooks are going to have a profound effect on the heartland and oil prices driven by the continuing wars and rumors of wars in the Mid East are going to aggravate the economic dislocation and the President’s Energy Bill opening ANWR to drilling is not going to ameliorate it.

Farmers, the salt of the earth populating the Red States and a shrinking minority of Americans, aren’t the only segment of the population that will suffer the consequences of nature sending a drought in the midst of a crusade for oil. William Jennings Bryant put the reality of agriculture’s contribution to the general welfare clearly just over a century ago. He said, “Destroy your cities and leave our farms and cities will spring up again as it by magic. But leave your cities and destroy our farms and grass will grow in every street in the nation.”

Cindy Sheehan is sitting in the dust outside of the ranch at Crawford asking why her son had to die. From Crawford north to Lake Superior farmers are standing in the dust watching their crops wither and their dreams die. But in the Dallas board rooms and on the energy trading floors the mood is upbeat. Record prices mean record profits in the energy industry. And on the Ranch code named Prairie Chapel a President plays at ranching and the brush gets cut but it still doesn’t rain.