You Have to Feel Bad for Farmers in the Dakotas

We got lucky late last week and Saturday as we only received around three tenths of an inch of rain and what snow fell melted fairly soon. However, you have to feel for those farmers in the Dakotas, especially North Dakota. I saw a few pictures and I am not sure how wide spread the heavy snow was but one to two feet of snow and 60 mile per hour winds is not good in the middle of September!

I do not have any experience with a storm like that and what impact it would have on soybeans in the field. In the Halloween blizzard of 1991 there was some corn left in the field but the soybeans were harvested. After the storm I saw my corn field with snow drifted as high as the ears on the stalk. It eventually warmed up and we got all the corn combined except the outside rows where the snow was so deep it did not melt until spring.

Soybeans however are a lot more vulnerable than corn. Being covered in wet heavy snow will likely take the fragile bean plants down to the ground as it melts. Plus, with 60 mile an hour winds you have to wonder if the beans have not already been thrashed out of the pods are on the ground. I read one analysist last week say 100 to 300 million acres of beans may be lost to the blizzard.

So, if the losses because of the blizzard are substantial I may get a higher price for my beans. That would be at the expense of those farmers. When you have been a farmer for as long as I have, you understand, we all take our turn at mother nature kicking you in the backside! Last year it was my turn with excessive rain and a hail storm!