News

South Dakota farmer’s crops ‘hanging on by a thread’ through the drought

While some parts of South Dakota had temporary relief from drought, that was not the case for Derrick Scott at Geddes, South Dakota, situated in the southern part of the state, close to the Missouri River. As Scott explains, his crops are narrowly avoiding outright drought conditions.

“Well, it’s hanging on by a thread,” he said, referring to his row crop acres that are not irrigated. “The corn and the beans look pretty good; we received about .70 of an inch of rain last week.” There have been areas, Scott’s included, that haven’t received the rain that has fallen in other parts of the state.

“We missed out on the big rains that we were supposed to get yesterday,” said Scott, “but otherwise, we’re getting by day by day.”

Some, not all, of Derrick Scott’s corn and soybean acres are irrigated. He says the irrigated acres have been getting water for a couple of weeks.

The consistently dry weather this summer is a departure from the struggle he and other growers experienced for multiple seasons in a row during which they were able to plant only parts of fields because of too much rain. From that standpoint, Scott says it was a good planting season.

“Yeah, it was. We didn’t have any trouble, we planted fencerow to fencerow,” he said. “Things look pretty good, the beans are flowering and stuff, but they definitely could use a drink.”

Although there have been a lot of very warm days, Scott, Secretary of the South Dakota Soybean Association, says the worst of the heat was avoided during a critical time for his corn crop.

“The corn looks really good, it’s not turning yellow or anything,” said Scott. “When we had our tasseling, and when all the pollination was going on, we didn’t have any severe hot weather during that time, so I think everything pollinated quite well for us this year.”

Now, as Scott’s soybean crop is flowering, there is a critical need for precipitation that will help determine yield.

“Oh, this is definitely the time when they love moisture and it’s when [rain] really makes a good crop when they’re flowering like this,” he said, adding that he is still confident that he’ll have a good crop.

“They’re hanging in there,” said Scott, about his soybeans. “It’ll be interesting to see what they end up doing.”

He compares his soybeans to his recently harvested wheat crop. “We didn’t know if we’d end up with much of a crop at all, but we ended up having a real good wheat crop, spring and winter, [it] yielded well, the quality was good.”

Despite ongoing drought, Scott is, at this point in the growing season, confident about the prospects for the 2021 crop.

”It’s surprising that things can be as dry as they are,” he concluded, “and you can still end up with a pretty good crop.”