Minnesota drought puts farmers’ crops in potential peril

(FOX 9) - This summer, Mother Nature has thrown another curveball at farmers across the state. At times, some were getting too much rain in their fields, and now some are hardly getting any.

"We’re tired of it. We just keep being like one more year and it’s going to be fine," Goodhue County farmer Betsy Wentz told FOX 9 on Monday. "We’re feeling a little bit discouraged that it just keeps happening year after year."

Wentz grows a little bit of everything on her family’s vegetable farm Rotational Roots. Then, after harvest, they deliver garlic, tomato, zucchini, lettuce, squash and sweet peas to the Northfield farmers’ market.

But without enough rain this summer, their farmers’ market has only had one vegetable farmer this year.

"So that’s been really sad, we’ve been the only farmer with vegetables at all," Wentz said. "My heart is just hurting for the [four or five] other farmers who aren’t able to do anything right now… their whole livelihood is gone. That’s a huge deal for them to not be able to sell their crops at all."

Rotational Roots has been able to stay afloat because it is one of a small group of Minnesota farms with irrigated fields. Wentz uses a well on her Cannon Falls property, and these days she has it pumping non-stop.

"We are getting up in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. to switch out our irrigation lines," Wentz explained.

Even then, it’s still hard to provide enough moisture given the lack of rainfall. Their farm got an inch of rain this weekend, but they say that’s a first since mid-April. Now they fear those drought conditions will translate to about a 40% dip on yield for some of their crop.

"We’ve already done some pretty substantial damage," Wentz said. "Some crops are not going to come back or pick up."

An hour and a half away in Mayer, Carl Olson doesn’t have irrigation, but he’s still hanging in.

"If we don’t get rain here in the next few weeks, I would say that’s going to be the big decision making for me," Olson said on Monday.

So far the corn and alfalfa at Olson’s Sunnyside Dairy Farm is doing okay. But Olson says he’s been growing with just seven tenths of an inch of rain since mid-May.

"I’m getting concerned more, I’m hopeful still that we’re going to get rain," Olson finished.