With harvest season approaching, Minnesota farmers lament summer flooding
BELLE PLAINE, Minn. — As harvest season approaches, many Minnesota farmers are wondering just how much of a crop they'll have this year.
Instead of dealing with drought like last year, they dealt with more rain than many fields could handle.
"Way too much of a good thing is just that: Too much of a good thing," Owen Gohlke said.
Gohlke made that statement back in June. Nearly three months later, he's saying the same thing.
"There was water here until about Aug. 1. The water didn't completely go away until Aug. 1," said Gohlke, owner of GoldKey Farms. "We have not had a year like this."
It started when consistent, early summer rainfalls turned some of his fields into lakes. One cornfield near Belle Plaine was hit especially hard.
"Not just a pond. This, I would call a pond. But in the middle out there would actually be a lake," said Gohlke.
The lake is finally gone, but it left behind a vast, barren area where corn should be. Instead, the only thing growing are weeds.
Gohlke estimates that he's lost about 18% of his corn crop this year. To put that in perspective, he only lost about 5% during the past couple of dry summers.
The average yearly rainfall for Gohlke's field is 25 inches. But it's already well over 40. Anything that tried to grow close to the temporary lake also came up short.
"That's quite the contrast, but it's something that we as farmers are used to seeing," said Gohlke.
Crop insurance will help with some of the loss but not all of it. As he prepares for the upcoming harvest, all Gohlke can do is hope for the best. He's come to the conclusion that a slightly dryer growing season is better than an excessively wet one.
"It might look nice and green, but I've walked into enough fields and looked at them. It just was too much water. Like I said earlier, too much of a good thing is just that. It's too much," said Gohlke.
In addition to corn damage, Gohlke said that about 20% of his soybean crop didn't get planted due to wet fields.