The Dry Line

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Amy Scott: Flying into Dodge City, Kansas, from the west, the first thing I notice from the air is how flat it is. Crop land stretches all the way to the horizon in alternating squares of green and brown. This is farm country, and also cattle country. Walking down the ramp to the one-gate airport, visitors are greeted with a sign: “Cowboy Capital of the West.” Gunslingers Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday spent time here during the cattle drive boom of the 1870s. If you ever saw the TV show Gunsmoke:

Gunsmoke: You take Bulo, and you take the rest of your men, and you get out of Dodge.

Amy Scott: Yep, this is the town where that phrase comes from. 

When I walk into the visitor center to get my bearings, old episodes are playing on a TV screen. 

So what are the cupcakes for?

Visitors' Center resident: Today is the 70th anniversary of Gunsmoke. So we are helping celebrate the anniversary of Gunsmoke.

Amy Scott: You've got to be kidding. I can't believe I timed it so well. Wow. 

What brought me to town, though, is another aspect of Dodge City lore, and I find it right next to a bronze Wyatt Earp statue on a busy street corner.

Okay, I'm at a sign that says “The 100th Meridian, where East meets West.” 

The 100th meridian, it's the invisible longitudinal line that runs from pole to pole and cuts through the Great Plains. 

The Meridian passes through the city approximately one mile east of this marker between avenues L and M. The 100th meridian is historically significant to this region…

It's historically significant because it symbolized the dividing line between East and West, not just geographically or culturally. In 1878, the explorer and geologist John Wesley Powell observed a difference in the climate too.

Richard Seager: He said that was, you know, divided America into an arid half and a humid half.

Amy Scott: Richard Seager is a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. Several years ago, he looked into Powell's theory.

Richard Seager: And I thought, let's see if that idea is really right. And if so, why, physically, why does that occur? And can you see that in precipitation, soil moisture, vegetation and so on.

Amy Scott: He found that Powell's observations about the East-West divide and how it would influence farming and development were pretty spot on. But Richard also discovered something else. The line appeared to be moving, not the actual meridian on the map, but the dry line.

Richard Seage: The psychological 100th meridian, is moving east.

Amy Scott: East of the 100th meridian, he says, is gradually getting more arid as rainfall declines in the southwestern plains, and higher temperatures across the plains increase soil evaporation. Since 1980 Richard found the line had shifted about 140 miles to the east, and based on climate models, he predicted it would keep moving over time.

Richard Seager: We looked out into the future, and it continues moving eastward because of human driven climate change.

Amy Scott: And that could have huge implications for farmers, the economy and the global food supply.

Richard Seager: Climate change in the central US is of enormous importance to food security across the world.

Amy Scott: I'm Amy Scott, welcome to How We Survive. This is episode five: the dry line.

Kansas is known as the wheat state, but its farmers and ranchers also grow corn, sorghum and soybeans and raise cattle products that help feed people all over the world. So what does the shifting dry line mean for the US farming economy and for the global food supply? To find out, I actually got to get into Dodge, as in Dodge City, Kansas, and travel from west to east across the 100th meridian. This episode, we'll visit farms on both sides of the line and speak to families who are fighting to sustain their livelihoods in a changing climate. And we'll meet a scientist who is racing against the clock to breed new crops to help those farmers adapt so they can keep feeding the world.

The morning after I arrive in Dodge City, I jump into my car and drive down a straight two lane highway. The sun is peeking up over the horizon. The only person I've talked to is my GPS and myself.

Okay, I am turning onto county road 130. Not many cars on the road. Why am I using my turn signal? There's another sign for Ehmke. Since 1886, wow. 

About 80 miles northwest of Dodge City, I arrive at a farm. It's pretty and pastoral. There's a stillness in the air. I'm standing in awe of a structure I've never stepped into before, a giant silver grain bin that's been converted into an office. 

Good morning. How’s it going, how are you? Vance, right?

Vance and Louise Ehmke are the husband and wife team behind Ehmke Seed in Healy, Kansas. Vance is tall, repping his state with a gray Kansas baseball hat. He wears glasses and a coral and blue plaid shirt.

Louise Ehmke: This is Louise. Good morning. Galen. What's up?

Amy Scott: Louise, who's fielding the phone, rocks short, salt and pepper hair, her black t-shirt says, “thank a farmer.” Together, she and Vance manage 14,000 acres of land and sell certified seed to farmers across Kansas and the surrounding states.

Louise Ehmke: We're on the high plains of western Kansas. We're 35 miles from the 100th meridian. So we're in the real west.

Amy Scott: Louise says, as equal owners of their business, Vance has the vision of where they're going, and she gets them there. She's the one you can often find staring at a double computer monitor like she's going to land a plane. 

To understand the future of farming in a drier Kansas, I wanted to speak with two farmers who had lived and survived in the type of climate that might be coming for folks further east, because theirs is a story of constant adaptation. Healy is in one of the driest counties in the state, with an average annual rainfall of about 21 inches. Though this summer, Vance says, has been anything but dry.

Vance Ehmke: We are having such incredible weather. Look at the grass out there. They're just sopping wet. 

Amy Scott: After nearly four years of drought, Vance says they're on track for the wettest year on the farm since he and Louise started 50 years ago, knocking on the door of 30 inches of precipitation.

Vance Ehmke: But guys, it is not gonna stay that way.

Louise Ehmke: We have had dry spells that have lasted years.

Amy Scott: Vance and Louise have been married 54 years, and when Louise talks about her husband, you can hear her admiration.

Louise Ehmke: I will say that Vance has been key in protecting that soil-base moisture, so that every year we have been able to plant wheat and get a crop. And and I have learned that you know you you protect that soil moisture with your life.

Amy Scott: And the admiration goes both ways.

Vance Ehmke: She's been a great business partner. She's got a terrific business mind.

Amy Scott: Vance started his career in the early 1970s as a journalist writing for various farm publications, but gradually took over his parents farm. Over the past 50 years, they've expanded to become one of the top seed dealers in western Kansas, growing wheat, rye grain sorghum, also known as milo, and something called triticale, a crop that helped save their farm back in the 1990s Vance was still doing some freelance writing.

Vance Ehmke: I had written a couple of stories about triticale, and it just sounded really kind of interesting.

Amy Scott: Triticale is a drought-hardy hybrid of wheat and rye that showed promise in this semi-arid part of Kansas, it looked like wheat and you could grow and harvest it with the same equipment. So Vance thought he'd try some out on his own farm.

Vance Ehmke: So one of the ways you manage risk is you go ahead and do something, but you do it on a small scale, so if it blows up in your face, you’re gonna walk away. We went out to Colorado State University and got about 20 or 25 bushels of triticale and brought it over here and planted it on this field here.

Amy Scott: The triticale did well, so the Ehmkes planted more of it, and over time, a market developed. Cattle operations started buying triticale for feed, and planting it for grazing. And over the years, the Ehmkes investment has paid off as water became even more of a concern. In the mid 1990s, more people started realizing that the Ogallala Aquifer, the ancient groundwater reservoir beneath the Great Plains that farmers had relied on to irrigate their crops was shrinking fast.

Vance Ehmke: All of a sudden, everybody wakes up and, Oh, my god, we're running out of water. What are we going to do? And guys, the handwriting is on the wall. You know, they thought that it was like the Gulf of Mexico. You could just pump it forever. No, you know, it took 50 or 60 years to find out that, oh, my God, you know, there's a finite supply of water down there, and it's taken thousands of years to create that aquifer, and we've used it up. You know, some people say that half of it's gone right now. It's causing major changes in what we do out here.

Amy Scott: Changes like farmers planting less corn, which requires more water, and converting irrigated land to dry land that relies on rainfall. Over time, the Ehmkes expanded from just 20 acres of triticale to four or 5000 acres, and that decision has helped keep their farm profitable through the bad drought years of 2011 and 12, and 2022.

Louise Ehmke: In order for a farm to be sustainable, it has to be profitable, and that is key.

Amy Scott: Vance and Louise have managed to stay profitable because they're constantly pivoting to preserve moisture in the soil. They've adjusted their crop rotations and started reduced till or no till farming where the soil is left alone instead of turned over before planting, and they're constantly checking in with the scientists and researchers at Kansas State University for the latest insights.

Not everyone around them is so careful. Vance says some neighbors intentionally plant crops that are destined to fail.

Vance Ehmke: Now there's a number of farmers out here—you know, when it was really, really dry, I mean, they love it. Because, you know, it's a very safe bet that they're going to lose a crop.

Amy Scott: And when they lose a crop, federal crop insurance pays them anyway. Vance says that incentivizes farmers to keep planting crop after crop in aggressive rotations, rather than let a field go fallow to conserve moisture. He calls it planned failure.

Vance Ehmke: Now this is very, very bad, because who pays for that? Every other farmer, their rates go up to cover those losses. And you, you know Mr. And Mrs. American taxpayer, crop insurance is very heavily subsidized. You are paying farmers to do the wrong thing.

Amy Scott: Vance says some farmers are making poor decisions on purpose. Others are just negligent, as Vance and I drive around. He points out a neighboring farm

Vance Ehmke: You are not very good farmers. You can see all the weeds out there.

Amy Scott: Have you told them that they're not very good for good farmers? Do they know?

Vance Ehmke: They gotta know.

Amy Scott: A neighbor's negligence can be a threat to the Ehmke’s farm too, though, a deadly disease called wheat streak mosaic virus has been tearing through Kansas wheat fields in recent years.

When did it start showing up here?

Vance Ehmke: Oh, it's been here 100 years.

Amy Scott: But climate change is making it worse. The virus is carried by mites that thrive in warmer temperatures, which also cause the virus to replicate more quickly in the plant. After the spring or summer wheat harvest, if farmers don't control the volunteer plants that crop up, the mites can get picked up by the wind and carried on to other people's crops. 

Have you lost crops to this virus

Louise Ehmke: Oh yeah.

Vance Ehmke: A number of years ago, we had a neighbor who infected a half-section of our real high-dollar certified seed production, and cost us a quarter of a million dollars in loss. I mean, it was we just lost a whole damn thing, because of his negligence. And there's nothing you do about that.

Amy Scott: Once a wheat plant gets wheat streak mosaic virus, it can't recover. The only way farmers can fight back is by destroying that volunteer wheat before planting new crops and by turning to special wheat varieties that are immune to the virus.

So the dry line is moving, the deadly virus is multiplying America's bread basket. Could really use a game changer, a hero riding in on his horse to save the day.

Guorong Zhang: That's the purpose of this job, right? Help the farmers.

Amy Scott: That's after the break.

Amy Scott: Are you like the only person in Kansas who doesn't have a big truck?

Guorong Zhang: That's true. But I don't like a big truck. It's hard to park

Amy Scott: I agree.

Dr. Guorong Zhang is driving me in his little Ford Escape around Kansas State University's Agricultural Research Center in Hayes, Kansas. It's about an hour and a half's drive northeast of the Ehmke’s farm off I-70. Even though he isn't comfortable driving the giant trucks favored by American farmers, he is comfortable on farms.

Guorong Zhang: I grew up in a farmer family. Both my parents are farmers, but it's just in China. It's a small farm, you cannot make expect to make money from it.

Amy Scott: Guorong grew up farming an equally important staple in China: rice, as well as canola.

Guorong Zhang: Chinese usually use the oil to fry food, so need a canola, extract the oil.

Amy Scott: Yeah, it makes it so tasty.

In the same way the Ehmkes stumbled upon triticale, Guorong sort of stumbled upon Kansas State. He came to the US in 2003 for his PhD, bounced around following jobs and opportunities, and then landed in Kansas, where he’s one of two public wheat breeders for the state. 

What's the main goal?

Guorong Zhang: The main goal is just develop wheat varieties for western Kansas.

Amy Scott: If you call the Kansas wheat commission and speak with Rob, the director of finance and HR, he'll tell you, wheat breeders like Guorong are superstars in Kansas. They're a bit like NFL quarterbacks constantly on the field. They can make or break the season. Everyone knows who they are, including the Ehmkes. 

Vance Ehmke: Yeah, he's been here. Oh, yeah.

Amy Scott: Oh, wow, cool. So, and he's working on some of this stuff that you're talking about

Louise Ehmke: Oh yeah.

Vance Ehmke: Yeah we grow his varieties. We've got this new one of his, it is KS traditions.

Amy Scott: That's Vance Ehmke again. Guorong’s work is partly funded by farmers through the Kansas wheat commission. Every time, say, the Ehmkes sell a wheat crop, a small percentage goes into research funds. That money incentivizes breeders like Guorong to serve the farmers’ needs.

Guorong Zhang: Yield is number one. But if you want a consistent high yield, you need to have the drought tolerance, disease resistance, all those stuff to keep it consistent.

Amy Scott: For the farmers, more yield means more grain per acre, which means more profit without needing more land. And as journalist Michael Grunwald told us in episode three, producing more food with less land is key to feeding a growing population on a hotter planet. As the climate in Kansas is projected to become hotter and more volatile, Guorong is working on wheat varieties that can consistently produce a good crop. So basically, the perfect wheat seed for Kansas. No pressure. What does it take to create that perfect wheat seed? It takes a whole lot of patience over the course of a decade to start a breeding cycle. Guorong and his team do some matchmaking. They cross wheat lines that have desirable traits, say, one with a high yield and another shown to be disease-resistant, and over time, they develop the promising crosses and drop the weak ones.

Right now he's working on a variety resistant to wheat streak mosaic, the virus that cost Vance and Louise Ehmke a quarter of a million dollars in wheat a few seasons ago.

Guorong Zhang: This is a ghost chamber.

Amy Scott: Guorong opens a machine that looks like a refrigerator and shows me a wheat plant that's been infected with the virus.

Guorong Zhang: It has a virus, enough virus to kill the plants if they are susceptible.

Amy Scott: But this one so far looks good?

Guorong Zhang: Yes, yesterday, I checked only, I think 2% susceptible.

Amy Scott: Meaning only about two in 100 plants from this line show signs of infection. The susceptible plant has these white streaks on the leaves. Despite the odds against him. Guorong is a wheat breeding Hall of Famer. Since he joined the program, he and his team have released 15 varieties.

Guorong Zhang: Almost every year has something. 

Amy Scott I talked to Vance Ehmke and Louise Ehmke, they said they're using some of your seed—the tradition?

Guorong Zhang: Yeah, Tradition. The newest one, which is released this year. If we release something, they will have some, I mean, advantage over the old ones, at least, you know, some good traits from this variety, and then some good traits from another variety. Combine them together so make it better than any single older varieties.

Amy Scott: The best of the best become the MVPs, and are named after great people like Bill Snyder, the legendary Kansas State football coach. Though Guorong says marketing people come up with the names.

Guorong Zhang: I don't want to take that responsibility to them. If failed, they blame me on the names.

Amy Scott: But so far so good, right? 

Guorong Zhang: So far, so good. I think one variety, I chose the name after my predecessor, Joe. I named that variety after him to to honor him.

Amy Scott: So someday there will be Guorong.

Guorong Zhang: Ah, other people name after it. I don't think I want to name after my name.

Amy Scott: So you've got to breed for yield, nutrition, climate. Does it feel like a lot of weight on your shoulders?

Guorong Zhang: I mean, just kind of, you just do your job. You know, that's the purpose of this job, right? Help the farmers.

Amy Scott: And by helping farmers, help feed the world. About half of the wheat grown in Kansas is exported to countries including Mexico, Japan and Nigeria, and since the 1950s surplus harvests have helped feed the hungry through international aid programs. So what happens in Kansas can be felt around the world.

West of the dry line, the Ehmkes have been dealing with drier conditions for years now, and they've adapted. But I wanted to see how the changing climate is showing up on the historically wetter side of the 100th meridian. So I head another 150 miles southeast from Hays to Hillsboro, Kansas, and boy does the scenery change. The flat, treeless landscape gives way to rolling hills. Instead of milo and stubbly wheat fields laying fallow, I see a lot more corn and soybeans, crops that need more water. I pull into a driveway and see an explosion of small cats come from beneath a parked pickup truck, barn kitties that keep the mice at bay.

Paul Penner: Oh, hi, kitties. Yeah, you think I'm getting food.

Amy Scott: Paul Penner steps out of the truck.

Amy Scott: How tall are you, Paul

Paul Penner: 6’4”.

Amy Scott: I have been looking up. 

Paul Penner: Oh, I am sorry. 

Amy Scott: No, not your fault. 

I've come to meet Paul because Richard Seager’s research suggests the dry line once represented by the 100th Meridian now lies around here, closer to the 98th meridian. I wondered what changes Paul had seen in the 50 years he's been farming. Paul isn't like many Kansas farmers. He didn't inherit land. 

What did you start with?

Paul Penner: Zero.

Amy Scott: He started renting 80 acres, eventually buying some land. In over five decades, he's grown to roughly 1000 acres. Today, he grows wheat, corn, soybeans and a little bit of grass hay. We head out in his truck to take a look past acres of green soybeans getting near harvest and fallow wheat fields.

Paul Penner: I've made my own spreadsheets to calculate the yields and stuff, going back 20 years. 

Amy Scott: Over time, have you seen yields go up with the modern seed breeding and that kind of thing?

Paul Penner: I have. But you know what? Also, I've seen yields drop because of drought. And believe me, boy, have I seen them drop.

Amy Scott: According to US drought monitor data going back to 2000, Paul's county has experienced more frequent and severe droughts over the past 15 years, with especially bad years in 2012 and 13, 2018 and 2023.

Paul Penner: You can do everything right, and you still have a disaster waiting.

Amy Scott: Seems like there's a lot of heartbreak in farming. 

Paul Penner: Oh, there is. And you do it for the love of farming. But also, you know what, I'm a businessman too. I gotta, I gotta make money and and I get really angry at myself when I don't make money, you know.

Amy Scott: To try to keep making money in drier conditions, like Vance and Louise Ehmkes’ pivot to triticale, Paul has adapted too. Around 20 years ago, he started practicing no-till farming. After a harvest, instead of turning the soil over for the next crop, he leaves the stubble, reducing erosion and evaporation, and preserving the moisture in the soil. We drive out to one of his corn fields to check how close it is to harvest.

Paul Penner: And you see, you see all the evidence of, look: you can see.

Amy Scott: Yeah, that's wheat stubble under our feet, right? 

Paul Penner: And you see corn cobs you see from the previous corn crop. And in between, I don't know, maybe, you can look, here’s a soybean stalk.

Amy Scott: The corn is high above Paul's shoulders. He tears off an ear and shows me how you can estimate yield by counting the kernels. 

Paul Penner: You break it like that, and you can count start with this, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. 

Amy Scott: How's the yield looking based on this?

Paul Penner: I'm not going to stick my neck out here, but it is better than usual, because you know—you've heard the definition of an expert farmer, right?

Amy Scott: No.

Paul Penner: He's 50 miles away from home. He can brag over there.

Amy Scott: But at home, someone's gonna call him on it?

Paul Penner: Right. We know your fields. It ain't that good.

Amy Scott: Paul believes this practice of planting in layers of stubble has saved his crop during times of extreme drought, there have been times he's produced a decent crop when his neighbors had zero. This year, though, Paul says, has almost been too wet. He pulls up a rainfall app on his phone.

Paul Penner: You see that line, that line is average for 30 years.

Amy Scott: The average is about 36 inches.

Paul Penner: And this year, we've already done 42.

Amy Scott: By September, Paul's already had six more inches of rain than in an entire normal year. Much of it has come in short, intense bursts where only a fraction soaks in, leaving crops stressed. But one wet year doesn't change the trend line toward a hotter, more arid future.

So if Kansas gets a lot drier, you know, generally speaking, or just has a lot more like wide swings and variability, how does that impact the rest of the world and our ability to feed a growing population?

Paul Penner: Well, that that would be a serious concern. Obviously, number one, it's going to impact the amount of wheat available in production. It's going to, it could impact quality, depending on how the rainfall patterns are. We have to have, you know, a consistent form of moisture so that the nutrients that are needed can be absorbed and taken up by the roots and and produce a crop.

Amy Scott: But for Paul and for the Ehmkes, too, there's a challenge more immediate than climate change.

News montage: Farmers in Missouri and Kansas say they're about to feel a big crunch from the ongoing trade war with China. Retaliatory tariffs from other countries will make selling goods like wheat and corn more difficult.

Amy Scott: The squeeze is clear when Paul pulls up the numbers on his phone. To break even, he needs to bring in about $7.50 a bushel for wheat, but right now the market is offering less than $5.

What is causing the low prices?

Paul Penner: Tariffs, trade war. I could use some other expletives, but I won't. 

Amy Scott: We can bleep them out. 

Paul Penner: Okay. 

Amy Scott. Let me have it. 

Paul Penner: Okay. Pissing off our trading partners. And that’s what it is.

Amy Scott: Before the tariffs, Kansas had a rhythm. Roughly half the wheat moved overseas to countries along the Pacific Rim and in Africa. China bought a lot of the soybeans, as well as corn and milo, but now those markets are drying up in response to US tariffs. And tariffs have also raised prices for farmers for fertilizer and equipment. Paul says some farmers won't make it. 

Paul Penner: I think, I think you, you know you will see evidence of foreclosures. You know that that is on the rise, if you've seen the numbers. And also, farmer suicides are on the rise.

Amy Scott: And that's the nightmare, even if Guorong Zhong and his counterpart in eastern Kansas create the perfect seeds that can resist the heat, the drought, even the viruses, and seed dealers like the Ehmkes take those seeds and sell them across Kansas, and Paul plants those seeds as he prepares for hotter, drier seasons. What good is all that if the harvest ends up sitting in a grain elevator because the world has already found someone else to buy from?

It's been seven years since Richard Seager published his research on the 100th Meridian and its eastward shift. He wanted to keep studying it to help farmers adapt, but couldn't get funding. Now he’s researching changes in sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, a trend that could make drying worse in the southwestern United States. Meanwhile, deep cuts to climate research under the Trump administration will make it harder to understand and prepare for the changes that may be coming.

Richard Seager: What is most likely to happen is we will keep getting some serious heat waves and droughts in the region, and they will cause shocks to crop production and yields and incomes, and the government will keep paying out subsidies, you know, and we'll just stumble through. And the adjustments will be made, but it will be in sort of a disaster management mode, you know, and it won't be done in a way that will involve any advanced planning to try to prevent crises.

Amy Scott: Richard says, ideally US farm policy, and the billions of dollars in federal funding, could help guide adaptation to help farms remain economically viable.

Richard Seager: It's a huge piece of leverage the government has. But you know, we're not in that world anymore. Are we? We're not in the world of the government trying to do things sensibly and informed by science and data, you know, and trying to sort of help people out, we're living in a different world now.

Amy Scott: A different world that is changing, whether we prepare for it or not. It's clear talking to farmers that it's never been easy. The weather has always been fickle and hard to predict and out of their control, and they'll keep doing what they've always done, as long as they can adapt.

That's it for this episode of How We Survive. As always, if you like what you hear, please rate and review or share us with a friend. And you know how we've been asking for your questions all season long? Well, you've been sending them. Next episode, we'll have some answers. I'm Amy Scott. Megan Tan and C.C. Lucas produced this episode, with production support from Emma Condon and editing by Caitlin Esch, our deputy managing editor. Hayley Hershman is our senior producer. Scoring, sound design, and mixing by Brian Allison. Our theme music is by Wonderly. Bridget Bodnar is director of podcasts. Kelly Silvera is news director. Joanne Griffith is Chief Content Officer, and Neil Scarbrough is the vice president and general manager of Marketplace.