ARGUSVILLE, N.D. – Ernie Krabbenhoft has been farming this land for many decades but this summer he noticed his eyes weren’t seeing something as well as they used to.
He doesn’t think his eyesight is declining, though.
“I’ve never seen such little rain,” said Krabbenhoft, a wheat and soybean farmer, on a hot and windy mid-July day.
“Usually we’re just about too wet.”
Across the Dakotas and into western Minnesota the farmland is dusty, with most farm fields completely dry for centimetres deep. Around Mandan, North Dakota, farmers have already been hauling in hay and selling cattle because of the severity of the drought.
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In other places, like here in eastern North Dakota, the drought is only beginning to bite now that spring’s moisture bounty is used up. Most crops look lush but they’re on the point of decline. Late seeded soybeans are patchy and yellowing, but most wheat crops stand tall.
But inside the wheat heads moisture is now trickling in to make the kernels, and if the soil moisture runs out, this big-looking crop may yield little.
Krabbenhoft needs about 10 more days to get his spring wheat crop to the harvesting stage, and a last filling rain is needed right now. If it comes, he should be able to get a good crop.
“I’m hoping maybe 50 (bushels per acre),” said Krabbenhoft.
But every day without rain will cut that yield, and the present heat wave is hitting all the crops hard.
He can only watch the clouds above and hope, while his German Shepherd, Cobo, deals with the heat by curling up on the air-conditioned farm office floor.
Tomorrow’s too late
Down the road, farmer Chuck Nelson and his brother, Larry, were working on a swather. They hope their crops can make it through the dryness to produce a good yield.
The crop looks perfect but Chuck knows exactly when the next dose of moisture must come to finish it.
“Today,” he said, looking at the clouds above and considering the forecast for a few more days of heat and dryness.
He thinks his wheat crop is doing better than that of many of his neighbours due to his organic farming practices, which leave fibrous material in the soil.
“We seem to retain the soil moisture better than conventional farmers,” said Nelson.
“Even though we’ve had 10 inches less rain than we had last year at this time, we’re still holding our own.”
The drought covers much of the United States Great Plains, with little rain since the snow melted.
The heat wave is damaging crops and stressing farm communities.
On local radio stations this day came news of a summer festival and baseball tournament in Taunton, Minn., being cancelled because of the heat. Lawn-watering bans have been implemented in many small towns and there are warnings from local fire officials about the risk of wild fires breaking out.
It has left farmers and rural people in a sour and anxious mood, something that doesn’t help business in farm country.
In Glyndon, Minn., West Central Ag Services manager Eric Langlie is working in his air-conditioned office, which is inside an old grain elevator, and hoping rain comes in time to save his clients’ crops.
Soybeans, sugar beets and corn crops can burrow down deep to get subsoil moisture, but wheat doesn’t have as good a root system.
“This is hurting the wheat the most,” said Langlie.
“We need a rain. That’s about it.”
Wheat prices have been pushed up to best-for-a-decade levels, but some analysts think the full impact of the drought hasn’t been fully factored in.
Krabbenhoft thinks the market should be giving him some compensation for what the weather is doing to his crops.
“It should be going higher,” he said.
Langlie just wants a rain.
“Maybe tomorrow, they said on the weather. Who knows?”
