Flooding delays planting
By Mikkel Pates
The Forum
In the larger scheme of things, Jeff Nord is quick to emphasizes his problems are minor.

"What I have is my two cultivators, sitting under a snow bank," the 44-year-old Wolverton, Minn., farmer says, mucking through a driveway toward the snow pile about four miles east of town. "I’ve parked them in the same spot for years and I’ve always been able to get at them out."

Nord has been chipping away at the problem for weeks, but says expects to get them out for sure by Monday. His two teenage sons will be shoveling today. "I’ll put a 12-pack of pop on the snow bank and let ’em go at it," he says, chuckling

Nord and a hired man farm 1,364 acres. About 250 acres are winter wheat, greening up nicely. Nord expects to start planting cereal grains and 436 acres of sugar beets late next week.

Sugar beet planting should be at its peak right now, says Bob Levos, Crystal’s vice president for agriculture, who drove from Moorhead to Drayton, N.D., with other executives on Friday.

Levos says the company won’t decide until mid-May whether it needs to increase acreage from the current 460,000 to offset late planting. "Last year only 10 percent were planted by May 10, Levos said.

Crystal started seeing yield reductions on beets planted the last week of May or later, he said. "Two weeks from now I’d say we could have a fourth planted," barring more rain.

Tom Knudsen, vice president of agriculture for Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative in Wahpeton, N.D., doesn’t expect to increase from the 92,000 expected. A few acres went in Thursday.

Farther north, agriculture is still in a crisis mode.

Andrew Thostenson, county extension agent in Pembina County (temporarily emergency operations public information officer), generated a map that showed 180 square miles inundated on Friday. Water penetrated 15 miles into North Dakota.

Similarly, the eastern third of Walsh County, with about 11 miles still under water.

Terry Gregoire, an NDSU Extension Service area agronomist based in Devils Lake, N.D., said it could take two to three weeks for water to recede and another 10 days to dry off for planting – assuming no major rain storms.

Where lakes have backed up, or water rises in undrained, low-lying areas, land will be out of production. Overland flooding has cut off most east-west roads in some counties. Farmers who move equipment two miles to the field may find themselves traveling a 24-mile maze.

Gregoire says some major fertilizer and chemical distributors in the Grand Forks area have been disrupted, but here he is optimistic. "I would think the supplies of these products would be able to come from other distribution areas," he says.

Scott Stofferahn, executive director for the Farm Service Agency in North Dakota, says a survey two weeks ago indicated 1.7 million acres were inundated. He expects later estimates to show similar numbers, but shifting northward. It’s tricky to be precise.

"Last year we did a survey that showed a likelihood of prevented planting, but they had good planting season and most of it was planted," Stofferahn says. "That could happen again, but the odds are stacking up against some of these folks."

And when crops are planted late, the odds are also against a good crop it often means grain heads are developing in hot, dry weather. "The odds are against us, but late planting doesn’t mean we won’t have a good crop. We did last year."