Conor Smith has no trouble finding farmers in his region who love growing wheat.
“It’s an emotional thing here,” he said while touring around the rich farmland of west-central Minnesota and southeastern North Dakota.
“People grew up growing wheat and have a lot of fond memories.”
Yet despite a local soft spot for the crop, Smith, a leadership development assistant with the North Dakota Farm Bureau, has trouble finding anyone who chooses to grow it.
“People really don’t see it as a money-making choice,” he said.
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But even as short season corn takes over much of land once reserved for wheat, there remains a reservoir of good will toward wheat and a hope among farmers that yield improvements could once more make it a reasonable rotation choice. Corn has its problems.
“It costs 40 percent more than wheat to grow, we’ve had to add trucks, and we had to build a lot of storage,” said Matt Hasbargen, who now grows wheat only to prepare fields for sugar beets the following year.
“Corn has forced us into a lot of capital expenditures.”
This region has been a bin seller’s dream in the past 20 years. The corn invasion has forced farmers to build enormous bins, such as the 175,000 bushel giant that sits with Hasbargen’s other half dozen bins that loom over one of his few wheat fields.
Corn is also expensive and financially risky to grow, demanding higher input spending than wheat.
But what farmers around this area like mostly about wheat is the timing of harvest, something that allows them to manage their farms more effectively. At one time, half a farm’s harvest would occur in August as the wheat came in. Now, with corn, soybeans and sugar beets consuming most local acreage, August is more relaxed.
“When I was a kid, I’d always complain that I could never get to We Fest,” said Hasbargen with a chuckle, referring to a big local country music festival held early every August.
“Now that the wheat harvest has become a non-event, we can go.”
But an easy August creates a logistical nightmare for local farmers when the other crops start maturing at the start of September.
“We’ll work every day until November first, if we’re lucky. If we’re not lucky, we’ll work until Thanksgiving. If we’re still unlucky, we’ll work till Christmas,” said Hasbargen.
That allows no room for down time due to machinery breakdowns and prevents farmers from preparing their land and managing their farms for the coming season.
This is flat land, with little grade, so drainage is also a prime concern. When there was a major wheat harvest, most farmers would have late August to early September to ensure their ditches and drainage channels are clear.
They would also have that time to prepare the wheat fields for the next year’s planting, something that now often gets shoved into spring if the fields are occupied by corn, soybeans and sugar beet crops.
Today most farms in the area are set up well to grow corn, after years of upping bin space, buying bigger trucks and learning how to manage the tight harvest deadline.
But if wheat ever does come back as a major part of rotations, either through yield improvements or through a dry cycle making corn less financially attractive, there won’t be many farmers looking to add grain storage.
“If that ever happens, we’re going to have some bins for rent,” said Hasbargen.
“We have three times as much storage as we need for wheat.”
