Sad Stories From The Drought

CNN talks with Missouri dairymen forced to sell their herds:

It took only 30 minutes for an auctioneer to sell Mark Argall's 33 cows.

As rain pattered on the metal roof of the auction barn, they were showcased one by one behind a metal fence and in front of a 100-person crowd. Bright lights hung over the scene. An announcer offered motorboat-speed commentary, jabbering about weight and price and quality of their coats. Two men with long metal sticks smacked a wall of the cage and poked the cattle to try to keep them spinning like ballerinas for the buyers, who selected cattle by making almost imperceptible motions -- a wink, the tap of a finger.

All of it was, of course, difficult for Argall to watch. He chewed on the tip of a pen and sighed as Bionce, Cupcake, Maggie Mae ("You ever hear of Rod Stewart?" he said) and the rest earned less than half what they would have before this drought.

"They're not just numbers on a computer," he said. "They're members of the family."

His wife, Jeanette Argall, took it harder. She fled to her sister's house in Arizona that week so she wouldn't have to be around for the sale.

Jeanette Argall grew up near Kansas City, and when her husband brought her to his parents' farm near Stockton, "she didn't know which end of the cow the milk came out of," he said. But she took to dairy farming with unexpected gusto, naming each member of the Argall family herd with great care and decorating their kitchen with literally hundreds of cow-themed knick-knacks. There's a cow-shaped kettle on her stove; dozens of plaques for their achievements in "cow shows" cover the wall.

"I love cows. I love dairy farming. We eat, we breathe, we sleep dairy cows," she said. "It's a passion. It's a way of life. When you work so closely with these animals they become your family."

The story is pretty depressing.  Livestock farmers are getting pummelled by the drought, and the problems will be with us for at least a year until next year's harvest, and ethanol production isn't helping matters.