It has been a wet and stormy start to summer in southern Minnesota, and the immediate weather forecast does not look promising in terms of relief.
The Owatonna area ended the week in a flood watch, originally scheduled to end Saturday afternoon, while a flood warning was put into effect Friday afternoon through the night.
From Monday through Friday afternoon, the area had accumulated roughly 2.33 inches of rain, and the National Weather Service predicts another one to two inches are possible over the weekend. With the Straight River already classified as “very high” by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and many of Owatonna trails along the river having closed due to being under water, additional flooding for the river is expected throughout the weekend. Different trails and areas of parks throughout the city have been closed until further notice.
But outdoor recreationalists are not the only ones being disrupted by the continuous precipitation. Steele County farmer Dan Deml said they’ve faced some issues with the rainfall as well.
“I think everything was really, really waterlogged and really, really wet,” he said. “And there is water standing in some places. But by and large, I think most of the ground is doing pretty well. All in all, we’re fortunate that pretty much all the crop is planted in Steele County. So I think it’s just a wait and see and hope we get some more warm, dry weather. That’s kind of the way I’m seeing it right now.”
Steele County hasn’t seen as much flooding as Rice County in recent months, and there’s not a lot of prep work as this weekend approaches for Deml.
“I mean, there’s nothing we can really do about it,” he said. “You just got to let it rain. I don’t know what we would do different. As far as flooding or anything, we don’t have any problems with that. Water runoff, we’re pretty well tiled. But sometimes, you just have to sit and wait it out.”
Drainage tile is typically plastic tubes meant to keep the water table below a certain threshold. The tubes are covered in holes for water, but not soil, to seep into and then flow out to another area.
He said Steele County farmers are talking about economic concerns, more so than flooding right now.
Crop prices have dropped significantly, between corn falling to nearly half the price it was two years ago and soybeans falling more than 16% in the last year. Deml also noted the high interest rates leading some farmers to pause plans to upgrade machinery this year.
Deml said he finished most of the spraying and other tasks early, so he’s dodged a lot of the problems with rain. One of the pests he sprays for is the corn rootworm.
Jim Purfeerst, Rice County Commissioner and fifth generation farmer, said that Rice County farmers have seen a rising number of the corn-killing bug in recent years. But he said the bug’s population control could wind up being one of the only good things to come from the excessive rain.
“I am hearing one of the benefits is, as our corn-rootworm larvae are hatching now, it sounds like there’s a high mortality rate of them drowning,” he said. “They’re like a little worm out there, and it sounds like a lot of them are not making it through. So that might be a blessing in disguise for the corn-rootworm problem that we might be facing.”
Rice County
The Cannon River in Rice County is forecasted to get within 0.1 inches of major flood levels Monday, and local agriculture might see some lower yields.
Purfeerst said his prayers were answered this year, since he’s comfortably beyond the drought that plagued the area the last couple years. But it might be a bit more rain than he and other local farmers bargained for, and it isn’t looking to let up this weekend.
The Cannon River is forecasted by the National Water Prediction Service to reach 899.9 feet around midnight Sunday night and into Monday morning. 900 feet is considered major-flood level and can cause “extensive inundation of structures and roads” and “significant evacuations of people and/or transfer of property to higher elevations.”
“We’ve been keeping a very close eye on the river-flooding situation,” said Brian Klier, social media manager for Rice County Skywarn. “With most of our area soils already saturated, and the forecast expecting three to four inches, even six inches of rain for portions of Rice County, this is a very serious situation. We not only have to watch the river depths, but we also have to be concerned with flash flooding occurring in other areas throughout the next couple of days too.”
Oversaturated soil can lead to a litany of problems for farmers, noted Purfeerst.
“We’re better with the rain than we would be if we had a drought,” he said. “But some of the things that are happening with this rain is making it difficult.”
One issue Purfeerst said, especially for farmers that split apply their nitrogen, is trouble with applying nitrogen on wet soils. Another issue is the herbicide and pesticide application to crops, since it can’t rain for several hours or else the chemicals will wash away.
“You get this much rain, it condenses the soil down and it kind of pushes the oxygen out of the soil,” he said. “So that prohibits some of the root growth you would like to have on your plant.”
Most of the crops have been planted already in Rice and Steele counties, despite waterlogged fields. However, soil cultivation is unfeasible at the moment.
“This corn is getting tall enough now where it’s going to be difficult to get it cultivated,” Purfeerst said. “If I could cultivate it, that would stir the soil up and get some oxygen down there, but that’s going to be difficult. It’s just too wet. The corn is getting too tall.”
Erosion prevention
Another one of the major problems Purfeerst noticed lately is soil loss. He said this is especially common for farms using traditional tilling practices.
“There’s a few fields around that are heavily tilled on different operations,” he said. “There’s some severe soil loss happening on some of them.”
However, that loss is preventable. Maybe not completely preventable, but soil loss is able to be mitigated using minimal-till techniques, like the no-till or vertical-till methods he uses at his farm.
“Strip-till, no-till, vertical-till,” he listed. “All make a huge impact, as far as soil loss. They protect the soil to where it doesn’t erode. It really helps with the erosion aspect of things. And the government, through the EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program) program, has helped a lot of basins and waterways get built. And the filter-strip program along the creek within our area, all really helps keep the water cleaner for us and eliminate some of the soil erosion that you’ve seen or that’s happening.”
While Deml mentioned using drainage tile for water control, which Purfeerst also brought up, Purfeerst mentioned catch basins that he uses as well.
“Those are huge this year for a couple reasons,” he said. “They catch the water and they hold it up on land. The basins are designed to drain off in 24 hours. And that keeps some of this flash flooding — we get a big rain quickly — that keeps a lot of that moisture up in these containment areas for up to 24 hours. The reason they’re designed to drain off in 24 hours is that way your crop will not drown out above them.”
Crops that are submerged for more than a day can drown and die, said Purfeerst. Keeping the water in a basin can prevent or mitigate this loss.
Most Popular
Comments / 0