Future Not so Bright for Farmers and Ranchers
The flood waters may be receding, but ranchers and farmers in North Dakota and Minnesota are not entirely on dry land yet. Instead, they are worrying that 2009 is going to be a repeat of 1997, the year spring storms and record flooding devastated crops and cattle herds and forced an 85% dive in farm income.
According to Andy Swenson, a farm management specialist with the North Dakota State University Extension Service, farmers and ranchers already have two strikes against them this year: the wet fall of 2008, and the severe winter that just ended. "The third strike is what the weather is going to be like this spring," Swenson said. "We're in spring, and it's not going so well for us. We're halfway through our third swing and not connecting."
Some farmers and ranchers are nearing their limits. Linton-based Leroy and Karleen Materi lost more than half of their herd (about 120 cows and calves) when a creek spilled its banks, and they're now considering a move to Bismarck. "It's hard to live like this," Karleen Materi said. "It's not a pleasant situation. (Leroy) said at first he was going to sell them all. But it's hard for him to give that up. That's his life. I think maybe he was just talking."
Others, like Minnesota-based Bryan Hest, whose farm is on that side of the Red River, are trying to remain optimistic, despite the fact that he's spent part of this spring in his combine, harvesting corn he couldn't gather last fall because the weather was too wet. "I'm quite confident there is still opportunity," he said. "If we can get in (the fields) relatively decently this spring, we can pull out a crop."
But for many farmers in the Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota, the opportunity does not seem to be there. Doug Hagel, regional director of the federal Agriculture Department's Risk Management Agency, said flooding might prevent a lot of fields from being planted at all – perhaps the most in years, while others will be planted very late in the season.
Twelve years ago, when the Red River last flooded this badly, there were more than 800,000 acres of "prevented planting," a crop insurance term that refers to land that can't be seeded because it's either to wet or too dry. Farmers with crop insurance are typically reimbursed only a portion of what they could have earned from an actual crop.
Later planting doesn't just mean potential loss of crop yield and quality, but a deadline for crop insurance as well.
Such insurance isn't available to ranchers, however, even though there are new federal farm laws that include emergency aid programs. Says Roger Johnson, who was head of North Dakota's agricultural commission until this week, when he left to had the National Farmers Union, "I think (livestock losses) are going to be the biggest consequence of this difficult winter and spring," Johnson said.
agency is still gathering information on animal deaths, and does not yet have an estimate of the severity of this year's loss, but he says the calving season is half over and reports are still coming in. "Nobody markets day-old calves," he said. "That $100 calf that you lose at birth is maybe a $500 or $600 calf in the fall or early next year. This is a problem that's going to be with us for a while. It will be manifested as the year closes and the next year begins."
