{"id":23643,"date":"2025-02-07T12:16:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-07T19:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/its-been-a-dry-winter-drought-plans-can-help-producers-curb-negative-impacts\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:40:08","slug":"its-been-a-dry-winter-drought-plans-can-help-producers-curb-negative-impacts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/its-been-a-dry-winter-drought-plans-can-help-producers-curb-negative-impacts\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a dry winter. Drought plans can help producers curb negative impacts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Retta
Retta Bruegger, the CSU Extension Western Region Rangeland Specialist, presents on drought planning for producers at the 2025 Southwestern Colorado Beef Cattle Symposium in Yellow Jacket on Jan. 23. (Cameryn Cass\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

To help farmers and ranchers proactively plan for drought instead of waiting until it\u2019s happening, the Colorado State University Extension and other partners came together and created a program.<\/p>\n

Five years ago, the Colorado Agricultural Drought Advisors program was created.<\/p>\n

It grew out of conversations that Retta Bruegger, the CSU Extension Western Region Rangeland Specialist, had with a Palisade farmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem they first discussed was how stressful drought is and how farmers and ranchers feel like they can\u2019t control much,\u201d said Emily Lockard, Montezuma County\u2019s director and agriculture specialist at the CSU Extension.<\/p>\n

Then, they \u201cstarted thinking of how we could give a framework to help producers consider what they can<\/em> control during drought,\u201d said Lockard.<\/p>\n

When the program started in 2020, there were successive dry, warm winters that year and into 2021, plus a dry summer monsoon in 2020.<\/p>\n

It was so dry, in fact, that precipitation totals for the 20 months between January 2020 and August 2021 were \u201cthe lowest on record since at least 1895 over the U.S. Southwest,\u201d according to the NOAA Drought Task Force Report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A
A graph from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) illustrating the drought from January 2020 to August 2021 in America\u2019s Southwest, the driest on record since 1895.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Fast-forward to 2025: It\u2019s no secret that winter has been dry.<\/p>\n

Though there\u2019s still time left for more snow and hopes for a wet spring, \u201cSnowpack is looking bad for this area of the state,\u201d Bruegger said at the 2025 Southwestern Colorado Beef Cattle Symposium on Jan. 23.<\/p>\n

As of Feb. 6, the Upper San Juan Basin has 59% of its median snow-water equivalent, and the Lower San Juan is at 18% of its median, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat can you be thinking about doing to be proactive, instead of waiting?\u201d said Bruegger.<\/p>\n

And while \u201cspring precipitation is important,\u201d nobody can control what might happen.<\/p>\n

As one farmer has said to Bruegger, \u201cYou don\u2019t want to manage based on a 20% chance of rain on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s where drought plans come in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s targeted at producers, of course, since \u201cagriculture is impacted first and hardest by drought,\u201d said Bruegger.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd hoping for rain is not a drought strategy,\u201d she said. \u201cI advocate for a written plan. It reduces stress.\u201d<\/p>\n

That written plan need not be \u201csome big thing.\u201d It can be as simple as one or two pages.<\/p>\n

Bruegger broke a drought plan down into four, digestible parts.<\/p>\n

\"Emily
Emily Lockard (left) and Retta Bruegger at the 2025 Southwestern Colorado Cattle Beef Symposium on Jan. 23 in Yellow Jacket. (Emily Lockard\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

First, assess.<\/p>\n

Make an inventory of what you have, remember how drought has impacted you in the past, and consider what you\u2019re already doing in preparation for droughts.<\/p>\n

Second, plan.<\/p>\n

In this phase, producers are encouraged to set goals, brainstorm strategies and set trigger points.<\/p>\n

Trigger points are an important consideration, she said, since that\u2019s the \u201cpoint at which monitoring information prompts a decision.\u201d It\u2019s an \u201cif, then\u201d sort of approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to make decisions like selling cattle or fallowing fields when it\u2019s already dry and you\u2019re feeling really stressed,\u201d Lockard said. \u201cIt can be helpful to consider trigger points of when you will make a decision before you need to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fourth and final step of the plan is to learn and adapt.<\/p>\n

Simply, evaluate your plan and make changes to it accordingly.<\/p>\n

Lockard said that in the five years the program has been around, 38 producers have created successful drought plans.<\/p>\n

Another \u201c940 producers and ag and natural resource professionals have participated in Drought Advisors\u2019 Drought Leadership Training and drought-related webinars,\u201d said Lockard.<\/p>\n

Drought planning with the Colorado Agricultural Drought Advisors is free. There\u2019s a drought planning handbook<\/a> on their website, www.droughtadvisors.org<\/a>, \u201cbut that might be daunting to review alone,\u201d said Lockard.<\/p>\n

\u201cFarmers and ranchers are experts in their operations, but sometimes all of us could use a thinking partner when faced with difficult issues,\u201d the Drought Advisors website reads.<\/p>\n

Reach out to Lockard at Emily. Lockard@colostate.edu<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in creating a personalized, producer-led drought plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s free assistance for producers interested in creating a plan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[402,1587,28,60,29,2601],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-drought","tag-farms","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter","tag-yellow-jacket"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78210,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23643\/revisions\/78210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23643"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}