Winter Storm Is Devastating Texas Farmers and Ranchers
With unusually frigid temperatures and power outages, Texas agriculture is struggling.
Over the past week, a brutal winter storm has made life difficult in much of the continental United States. But few places have been hit harder than Texas.
The Lone Star State, which operates its own power grid, proved unable to cope with the excessive power needs caused by the freezing temperatures, snow and ice. The storm combined with the power outages, which have left millions of homes and businesses without power, have been devastating to the state’s agricultural industry. Texas is the nation’s top producer of cattle and cotton and a major producer of all kinds of other agricultural products, including dairy milk and broiler chickens.
It’s hard to count exactly how many ways the storm has damaged the state’s agricultural industry. The lack of power has also knocked water treatment plants offline, which means there’s often not enough water for thirsty livestock to drink. In the Wall Street Journal, one farmer recounts knocking surface ice off of troughs and ponds; the cattle don’t naturally recognize snow as a potential water source.
Processing plants have also been knocked offline, which sends shockwaves down the entire production chain. Farmers have, in an echo of the early days of COVID-19, been forced to dump milk, for lack of transportation and processing options. The Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Sid Miller, put the dollar amount in dumped milk into the millions.
KSN News interviews ranchers struggling during this calving season; calves are extremely vulnerable to cold in the first few days after birth, and some ranchers are struggling to keep them warm enough to survive. Some are bringing livestock inside their homes, attempting to keep them warm, or outfitting them in knitted sweaters and earmuffs. Many have not survived, with more to come.
Subscribe
0 Comments
Most Voted
Newest
Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].Winter Storm Is Devastating Texas Farmers and Ranchers
by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
February 18, 2021
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit