Drought in High Plains worst some farmers have seen

Associated Press

BEULAH, N.D.

Drought in North Dakota is laying waste to fields of normally bountiful food and hay crops and searing pastures that typically would be home to multitudes of grazing cattle.

Some longtime farmers and ranchers say it’s the worst conditions they’ve seen in decades – possibly their lifetimes – and simple survival has become their goal as a dry summer drags on without a rain cloud in sight.

“We’ve never been in this sort of boat, honestly,” said Dawn Martin, who raises beef cattle with her parents and husband in the southwestern part of the state, an area the U.S. Drought Monitor says is in “extreme” drought.

The drought’s impact likely will be felt not just by farmers but also consumers, state Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said. Agriculture in North Dakota is an $11 billion a year industry, and the state leads the nation in the production of nearly a dozen crops.

“It’s going to affect bread at the grocery store counter,” Goehring said, though he didn’t put a figure on how much costs might go up for shoppers. “Dry beans – navies, pintos – are going to be affected to a degree. Canola, that production is going to be cut, and that’s going to have an effect on vegetable oil.”

The latest drought monitor map shows nearly all of western North Dakota in severe or extreme drought, conditions that extend into northern South Dakota and northeastern Montana. Most of the rest of North Dakota is in moderate drought or abnormally dry.

John Weinand has had less than 2.5 inches of rain on his farm near Beulah, which is northwest of Bismarck, since the beginning of May. He’s used to getting more than 3 inches in June alone.

Weinand figures his wheat crop will be half what it usually is. As for his field peas, he expects to harvest fewer than 100 pounds per acre, compared with a typical 3,000 pounds per acre. He won’t even try to sell his barley; he’s already rolled it up into hay to feed his cows.

The situation is much the same across ranching country, with the best hay production about a fourth of normal. In pastures where grass might typically be 2 feet tall, “now we’re talking grass that if you laid a pop can on its side, it would be taller,” Goehring said.

More than one-third of North Dakota’s staple spring wheat crop and nearly three-fourths of the state’s pasture and rangelands are rated in poor or very poor condition, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.