Happy Nice Mall

TOWNER, ND – Darrell Rice stood in a cornfield he planted in early June to be harvested in the fall and chopped up to feed the hundreds of cows and calves he raised in central North Dakota.

“It must be six, seven, eight feet tall,” he said, looking at the stunted plants at his feet, whose normally drooping leaves are tightly wrapped around the stems to conserve water in the summer heat.

Like farmers across the state, Mr. Rice is suffering from an epic drought like nowhere else in this extreme weather season in the western half of the country, or worse.

Last winter’s lack of snow and almost no spring rain created the driest conditions in generations. To stay in business, farmers have to sell some of the herds they have built over the years, often at fire sale prices.

Some won’t be able to.

“It’s a really bad situation,” said cattle buyer Randy Weigel, who said this drought could force some older farmers to retire. “They’ve worked their whole lives to get their herds of cows where they want to go, and now they don’t have enough feed to feed them.”

Since December, on weekly maps United States Drought MonitorAll of North Dakota is colored in shades of yellow, orange, and red, symbolizing varying degrees of drought. And since mid-May, McHenry County, where Mr. Rice has farmed and farmed, is right in the middle of the deepest red that signifies the most extreme conditions.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the period from January 2020 to this June was the driest 18 months since modern record keeping began 126 years ago in McHenry and 11 other counties in the state.

“I’ve been farming for 47 years, and then it had to come this year,” said John Marshall, who ran a farm near Mr. As the cattle capital of North Dakota. “It’s the worst I can remember.”

drought conditions affecting almost half of the lower 48 states’ land area It’s helping raise beef prices in America’s grocery stores. But the farmers here say they don’t see that money – slaughterhouses and other middlemen. Ranchers said they lost money because they received less money from the forced sale of their animals.

The Marshalls have already sold around 100 cows and plan to sell at least 120 more, which will leave them about two-thirds of their usual herd. “We’ve never had to do it before,” said Mr. Marshall.

The corn that Mr. Rice has stored as silage to feed his animals during the year is so short that if he tried to harvest it now, he couldn’t do it. “It can’t be cut,” he said.

If there’s a little rain—a big if any is the continuation of the heat and drought predicted in the fall—the corn can reach a foot and a half, or half its normal height. Even then he would be facing a shortage of feed and would have to weigh his cows on the common farmers’ scales on Main Street in Towner and sell them to a buyer elsewhere.

“If we don’t get silage,” he said, “the cows are going to town.”

Rachel Wald, who advises and supports farmers at North Dakota State University, said livestock auction houses called sales barns have been very busy this spring and summer. “There are 2,000 creatures that hit the road every week,” he said in the county. By some estimates, half of the state’s cattle may be gone by the fall.

For farmers who have spent years genetically building their herds, this could mean a giant step back. “Every year we try to improve our breed,” said Shelby Wallman, who has been a farmer for decades in Rhame in the southwestern corner of the state with his wife, Daryl.

“It’s a call,” he said. “You spend your whole life with these cattle. I can tell you, there will be tears.”

North Dakotans have experienced drought many times before. It was particularly bad in 1988, but John Marshall and others who got through that year said the current drought was worse.

Farmers point to the volatile nature of the climate here, not to mention climate change – one or two dry years can easily be followed by a rainy season. Yet, as elsewhere, climate change is taking place in North Dakota.

“We are at the epicenter of a changing climate,” said Adnan Akyuz, the state’s climatologist and professor at North Dakota State University. He said the state has warmed by 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1.3 degrees Celsius) in the past century. This is one of the largest increases in the United States.

North Dakota’s climate is expected to become even more variable, with extreme precipitation and temperature. And as elsewhere, droughts are expected to increase in intensity and frequency.

Conditions vary widely because North Dakota is so far from the oceans that it has a temperate effect on the climate. When the state does not receive moisture from them, it relies on local sources, including lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, and moist air flowing into the area from the Gulf of Mexico in late spring and summer.

But that Gulf moisture didn’t come this year. And the heat has dried up most of the local water supplies. The result is air that absorbs all the moisture it can get from the soil and plants.

Signs of drought-stressed vegetation can be seen throughout McHenry County. Dwarf silage corn like Mr. Rice’s is called pineapple corn because the tight leaves make it look more like a pineapple plant. Elsewhere, soybean plants have turned their leaves to reduce photosynthesis and therefore water needs, giving them a paler greener appearance.

In the pastures of the Marshalls, the normally green grass reaching the knee is brown and stubby.

Marshalls rely on clean well water pumped into gutters for most of their cattle. But they and other farmers also use watering holes that collect snow runoff and rain. As watering holes dry up, nutrients and other compounds in the water become more concentrated, which can make animals sick.

In one of the Marshalls’ watering holes, the level had dropped several meters. Ms. Wald from the university tested sulfates and dissolved solids and told the Marshalls the water was still fine. But he noticed something else.

“One of the things I’m going to look out for here is actually blue-green algae,” Lane said. In the midst of the heat, organisms were thriving and could eventually release toxins that could harm cattle. “If a flower blooms, you need to get the animals away and find a new water source for them,” said Ms. Wald.

Like other ranchers, the Marshalls purchased supplemental feed. But as drought drives up feed prices, it makes more sense to sell animals at some point.

This kept the auctioneers busy. In a recent sale at the Kist Livestock Auction in Mandan, just across the Missouri River from Bismarck, farmers lined up in pickup trucks, trailers, to unload cattle they couldn’t hold.

On the outskirts of Bismarck, Tom Fettig and his wife, Kim, were there with the 60-year-old cub, about half of the flock their son was helping to raise. The animals were purchased in February for fattening until October, when they would be sold to a feedlot.

Drought ruined these plans. “We’ve only had them out to pasture since June 1,” said Mr. Fettig. “And there’s nothing left.”

Their hay crop was also awful. In a normal year they would reach 800 to 900 bales. So far this year there are only 21 of them.

Inside the semicircular auction ring, the Fettigs sat on a bench and waited for their toughs to go up for sale. They watched as other animals entered the parade, and auctioneer Darin Horner buzzed and shook prices. Weights and prices flashed on screens above the auctioneer’s head.

“There’s a nice set of steering wheels just outside the meadow,” said Mr. Horner as the Fettigs’ animals filled the ring in two groups of 30. The pieces sold for about $1,250—perhaps $150 less than a head, said Mr. Fettig. if only they could feed them all summer.

Fettigs and John Marshall are lucky to have their son follow them in the farm business. But Jerry Kist, one of the partners of the auction barn, noted that they are most vulnerable in this drought, as are older farmers whose children have left the land, and young farmers without farming parents. established.

“You don’t want to see these guys fold and sell whole herds of cows,” Mr. Kist said.