'Just Trying to Survive'

Dawson, a dusty county seat in the rich, red clay farm land of southeast Georgia, proclaims itself the "Spanish Peanut Capital of the World." Just how long the town (pop. 5,383) can maintain that claim, however, is in doubt. This spring's rainfall was barely 6.4 in., one-third of what it was last year. The peanut plants, normally large and verdant, the size of trash-can tops with diminutive yellow flowers nestled in their leaves, are Frisbee size, no more than 12 in. wide, and wilting. As for Dawson's usually rich crop of corn, folk wisdom has it that the stalks should be "as high as an elephant's eye by the Fourth of July," but now they are only three or four feet tall and not likely to grow much higher. Says Bobby Locke, head of the agricultural commission of the Dawson Chamber of Commerce: "We're just trying to survive."

Dawson's plight is common to the Southeastern U.S. From central Florida to Atlanta to eastern Mississippi, the drought has already doomed such staples as hay and corn, normally harvested this month. The soybean, cotton and peanut crops are all endangered. Parts of the region are suffering their worst water shortage in nearly a quarter of a century. With most of the Far West and large stretches of the Midwest also in the throes of a prolonged dry spell (see map), the acting director of the Department of Agriculture's crop weather reporting service, Lyle Benny, cites 1977 as the worst drought year overall for the U.S. since the 1950s.

Cloud Seeding. In Vienna, Ga., home town of President Carter's press secretary Jody Powell, Dooly County Farm Agent Mack Sloan manages a weak wisecrack: "If it don't rain here soon, a lot of people will go under and have to go into selling roadside peanuts to Plains tourists." Farmers in every county, including Tom Chandler, Billy Carter's partner in several peanut deals, are collecting one dollar for every acre of peanut land so they can hire an airplane for a month's cloud seeding at a total cost of $75,000. Last week the chairman of the fund-raising committee. Bill Whitaker, wrote Actor Burt Lancaster, reminding him that he had once starred in a movie called The Rainmaker (1956) and asking him to help "the farmers who grow these suffering crops.'

For much of the Southeast, though, the damage has already been done. With 130 of Georgia's 159 counties declared disaster areas. 40% of the soybean crop in the state has been destroyed, costing farmers nearly $60 million. Damage to Georgia's corn crop has reached $162 million, and hay and pastureland losses total another $102 million. In Alabama, officials say three-quarters of the corn crop is gone, and certain counties in the Florida panhandle report the destruction of 95% of their corn and hay. The drought has proved a boon for bugs: without rain, insecticides fail to spread beneath the surface crust to the roots.

Inevitably, small farmers are the most vulnerable to ultimate defeat in the form of bankruptcy, foreclosure and repossession. "People are not going to be able to make payments on their tractors," says Whitaker, owner of a farm-equipment firm in Dawson. "In some cases we'll be forced to repossess."

Despite their dilemma, farmers typically are skeptical of federal aid. Says one: "You gotta be bankrupt before they'll give you anything. That disaster aid is a joke, and isn't sufficient to pay for the fertilizer." Nor are farmers looking to fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter to bail them out. "Jimmy's not the type who'd show favoritism," says Jim Warbinton on his spread outside Vienna. "Just because he's from this area, he's not going to roll the money in."

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