As dry conditions continue to worsen across the state, the Alabama Cattlemen’s Association (ACA) is asking cattle producers to take an active role in documenting the impact on their operations. These real-time reports help state climatologists and agencies monitor conditions more accurately—and could influence eligibility for emergency livestock programs.
We spoke with Erin Beasley of the ACA to learn more about the importance of timely drought documentation.
“As we typically see in the fall months in Alabama, we are quickly entering into a significant drought situation for most of the state, so this is the time of year that we encourage our producers to take some time to snap some pictures, document some data on the farm, and there is a tool that you can utilize to upload that information. We refer to it as the CMOR website and you can certainly visit with your local extension office, they can assist you with this, or if you want to refer to a Facebook post that will be out this week by the Alabama Cattlemen’s Association, we’ll have a direct link to the CMOR website.”
The CMOR website is a resource that allows producers to submit photos and answer a few guided questions. This information is used as boots-on-the-ground data to support weekly updates to the U.S. Drought Monitor—which can directly affect programs like the Livestock Forage Program.
“Again, you can upload your pictures, it asks a series of questions, and this can be done as frequently as you would like, and we know that this data is used as actual boots-on-the-ground data for our state climatologists and as these results are shared each week, it is hopefully utilized and goes into the thought process behind the weekly drought monitor map.”
“As we know, many of the emergency livestock programs that we depend on, such as Livestock Forage Program, are triggered from the drought monitor, and so we highly encourage our producers to take the time to do this.”
Beasley added a hopeful note:
“We certainly hope it will start raining soon, as that will make things easier as far as our pastures go and the ability to plant our winter grazing, but in the meantime, we need to be cognizant of we are in a drought situation, it’s getting dry, and we need to see what it looks like on your farm.”
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.
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