Moderate drought in much of Minnesota, report says

[MUSIC PLAYING] CATHY WURZER: Remember the relief we felt when that long two-year drought was broken earlier this spring as needed rains fell and kept falling? Experts said the drought was over after our wet spring. Well, guess what? It's back. A new report released this morning shows 40% of the state is now in moderate drought, with the rest considered abnormally dry.

The main areas of the state affected, Northeastern and Southwestern Minnesota, where farmers there have already been dealing with a smorgasbord of odd weather this growing season. For more, we're joined by Liz Stahl. Liz is a Crops Extension Educator with the University of Minnesota Extension Service. Liz, it's good to have you on the line. Thanks for taking the time.

LIZ STAHL: Great, yeah, it's great to be here.

CATHY WURZER: Gosh, I don't even know where to start. I'm sure folks in your area probably feel like they've been whip-lashed with all the rain-- well, first the drought, then the rain, and now more drought. Tell me how the growing season has been going so far.

LIZ STAHL: Yeah, whiplash, that's a great way to put it because, like you say, what a year of extremes. Early on in the season, we were coming off of a drought, third year of a drought. We've had, again, three years of a drought, didn't get much recharge last winter, had very minimal snowfall. Then this spring, we were, again, very dry conditions, hardly any moisture in the soil profile. And then, it started raining. And we're like, oh, that's great.

We're getting a little bit of rain. Well, then, it just kept raining. And, yeah, I mean, we had the wettest period from April through June. We had a lot of late planting. We had people that were trying to replant things two to three times just because things kept getting drowned out, a lot of drowned out areas. We had prevent plant acres again this year, too. Really challenging season. So we did have some crops get in earlier.

Some of those got drowned out and never were able to get replanted, again, had some replant. And then we had a lot of the crop that got planted later, too, just because we couldn't get in. So we've been dealing with that this season, just a wide range of planting dates, these areas that have drowned out. And then, throughout the season here, things were looking OK, finally. We did have corn having some nutrient deficiencies, too, just because of all that excess moisture. But like you say, now, moisture, the rain just kind of shut off for most of the area here.

In August, we could have used some more rain to help our bean yields, but, again, just some moisture shut-off. And now, like you say, we've shifted into from abnormally dry. That started up about-- the drought monitor put us into that area around the end of August. And then, now, a lot of the areas shifted into moderate drought again. So here we are. The thing is, most of the crop, it's reached maturity. So it's not affecting yield at this point, having these dry conditions. But we're always looking ahead. What impact is this going to have for next year?

CATHY WURZER: Well, let's talk about that in just a second here. But, so, obviously, the dry conditions are helpful in a sense as farmers are getting in to harvest the crops. So I guess that's good news, right? I am kind of wondering, though, about the wet conditions. You mentioned some nutrient deficiencies. But also, I wonder about fungus, maybe that kind of thing. Did you run into that at all or is that just taken care of with some of the chemicals put on the crops?

LIZ STAHL: Well, that's a good question, too. This would have been a higher risk in some areas, potentially, for diseases. We have seen, for example, some tar spots showing up in corn this year. And that is a newer disease to the state. But, typically, again, most areas that has moved in, we're seeing that appear later on in the season beyond the time that it would have an impact on yield and not at a high enough level that it impacted yield. So at least that was on our side.

Just, when you talk about the nutrient deficiencies, yeah, there was some nitrogen losses. That's a very complex nutrient. And there's just not a lot you can do when you get twice as much rain, typically, for example, than you'd normally get in a time period. And you can't put on enough supplemental nitrogen. Plus, there's a lot of issues with that, too. The crop can't take it up, don't want to have any losses. That's environmental and economic issues. So it's just been a lot of challenges that people had to deal with.

So, now, we're dealing with drought. And I know, once the crop is out of the field, we're all kind of looking to see if those soils are going to recharge with enough moisture before the ground freezes. But I'm not sure, given what I'm seeing here in front of me with the long-ranged forecast, that's going to happen. What will that mean, then, going into spring of next year? Well, yeah, that's a great question. That is a concern.

Again, we've had three years of drought now this year, excessive moisture. And it's interesting. Even though we've shifted into a drought category, I was looking at the amount of moisture, for example, at our Southwest Research and Outreach Center. They keep track of how much moisture we've had over the year. The average rain or the amount of rainfall we had this season is still above average. But, again, it's just when we got that. We got that all early on in the season. We just haven't gotten any later on here.

So, like you say, we are hoping to get some recharge. Things that I would recommend people really looking at if it does remain dry is, don't get aggressive in your tillage. Every time you're doing a tillage out there, you're drying out the soil. So we do want to keep what we have. Cover crops can help, too. We need to have moisture to get those cover crops growing, though, too. That's the thing. We do have a number of coverage crop trials at, for example, Lamberton and Waseca, the research and outreach centers there.

But, yeah, you need to have a little bit of moisture, at least, to get those going. But if you do get some of that moisture, that can help protect and retain moisture to help increase infiltration, anything that helps with soil health. So those are just some tips to-- again, this would not be the year to be really doing aggressive tillage because that's going to dry out the soil even more.

CATHY WURZER: Before we go, a quick question. You've been doing this for a while. How much more difficult is your job because of the increase in the extreme weather conditions that we're seeing?

LIZ STAHL: That's a great question, too. Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah, I mean, going from one end to the other, we're really trying to build in resiliency into the system. That's what I call, kind of, my fun, exciting part of my job is, working with cover crops. Those are long-term things that I really think are going to help us address these issues. And I know that it's not an easy button thing to do, is to integrate cover crops in a corn, soybean system.

But, hey, we're putting them into the system. You've got to figure out, OK, what works best? How can we modify this system? And people are doing that. People are doing that successfully, same with reduced tillage. So we've just got to keep adapting. We've always had to do that in agriculture. Now, when we're addressing these more extremes in our climate-- and it's not predicted to get any more mellower. These extremes are predicted to increase.

So we really do need to figure out, OK, how can we adapt to this? And how can we make our systems more resilient? So that's a challenge. But we've got a lot of people working with that and farmers figuring out innovative ways to work with us, too. So we got to keep optimistic, right? That's what we do in agriculture.

And, yeah, a lot of things can get thrown your way. And you look at, with even our corn and soybean hybrids, they're being bred to handle these changes, too, more extremes in the environment, too. So a lot of people are working on this just to help adapt to these challenging conditions that we can get thrown our way.

CATHY WURZER: Well, we wish you all the best down there. Thank you so much for taking the time, Liz.

LIZ STAHL: Sounds great, thank you.

CATHY WURZER: Thank you. Liz Stahl is the Crops Extension Educator with the U of M Extension Service.