North Dakota, northwestern Minnesota had strong 2009 crop year
By: Stephen Lee, Grand Forks (ND) Herald
Despite the late, slow growing season in 2009, crops turned out pretty good across North Dakota and northwest Minnesota, experts say.
And the dominance of North Dakota and Minnesota in growing a variety of crops was maintained, despite a long, difficult season last year.
Yields of soft and hard winter wheat across the bread basket of the nation were OK but not great, as drought or untimely rains hit large swaths of the region, said Frayne Olson, a crops marketing economist at North Dakota State University in Fargo.
And corn crops had a slow, troubled year that isn’t over because much still waits to be harvested.
But when it came to North Dakota and the hard red spring wheat and durum the state is famous for, Frayne Olson said it was a different story.
“We blew the top off the average wheat yields,” Olson said this week.
That helped in a year when prices to farmers weren’t as high as they were in 2007 and 2008. “It was just the perfect year,” said John Nowatzki, an agricultural machines specialist at NDSU, in describing the growing season for small grains.
Despite the wet spring and late start, the growing season worked out so well for small grains that record yields were hit across North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota for wheat and barley.
Many spring wheat growers averaged 60 to 70 bushels on their farms last year in the greater Red River Valley.
Statewide, the spring wheat crop averaged 46 bushels an acre, a jump of 21 percent over 2008 yields, which were near the more typical yield average of 38 bushels.
Partly because of a low-stress growing season, and partly because farmers, not expecting big yields because of the late start, didn’t fertilize as much as could have been used, the high protein levels that North Dakota wheat is known for didn’t materialize, Nowatzki said.
“The plants used all the nitrogen to produce quantity, and there was not enough left over to raise that protein,” he said. That cut the prices to farmers, despite the high yields.
It wasn’t just wheat that blossomed.
Nowatzki said he talked to one barley grower in central North Dakota who harvested an average of 92 bushels an acre across his farm in 2009.
“There were some unbelievable yields in barley,” Nowatzki said.
The numbers back up the anecdotes.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s year-ending report last month, North Dakota led the nation in all wheat production in 2009, growing 377 million bushels of all kinds of wheat, up from 311 million in 2008; and besting No. 2 Kansas which produced 370 million bushels.
But perhaps the most amazing figure was that North Dakota farmers upped their all-wheat yields a hefty 24.4 percent, to a record 44.8 bushels an acre, from 36 bushels in 2008.
The hard red spring wheat famously grown mostly in North Dakota really put out last year, averaging a record 46 bushels per acre, 5.4 bushels, or 14 percent, higher than 2008 yields and a full 4 bushels higher than the previous record yield in 1992, USDA says.
Minnesota’s wheat yield went down last year, to 52.8 bushels an acre from 55.9 in 2008.
Nationally, wheat yields came in at 44.4 bushels an acre, slightly lower than 44.9 in 2008.
Minnesota’s total wheat production, meanwhile, was down, to 84 million bushels from 104 million in 2008.
Total U.S. wheat production was down 11 percent to 2.2 billion bushels last year.
DURUM DOMINATION
North Dakota kept its domination of the durum wheat market, producing 61 million bushels last year, a full 56 percent of the national production, and up from 42 million bushels in 2008.
North Dakota’s durum yields were way up, too, by 56 percent, to 39 bushels an acre last year from 25 bushels in 2008.
North Dakota kept its No. 1 position in hard red spring wheat production with 290 million bushels last year, half of the national production, and up from 246 million bushels in 2008.
CHEERS FOR BARLEY
Beer drinkers owe North Dakota a debt of gratitude for devoting more ground to barley growing by far than any other state: 1.1 million acres, 36 percent of the nation’s total 3.1 million acres of barley harvested.
Montana is No. 2, with 720,000 acres harvested last year.
But North Dakota’s barley acreage slowly has decreased; in 2008, 1.5 million acres was harvested.
Last year, North Dakota farmers produced 79 million bushels of barley, down from 86 million in 2008, but a full 35 percent of the nation’s production of 227 million bushels. Average barley yields in North Dakota were way up last year as well, to 70 bushels an acre, from 56 bushels in 2008 and 2007.
Corn had a tougher year in North Dakota with the wet, late spring and cool summer. There is still more than one-fourth of the crop unharvested.
But even figuring that corn into the harvest, USDA pegged North Dakota corn production as down 27 percent in 2009, at 208.3 million bushels compared with 285.2 million in 2008, which was a record. Average yields per acre fell to 119 last year from 124 in 2008.
Minnesota’s corn production was up 6 percent last year at 1.25 billion bushels, from 1.18 billion in 2008; but yields rose to record 175 bushels an acre, up 11 bushels, or 6.7 percent, from 2008 levels of 164 bushels, and 29 bushels higher than 2007.
Total U.S. corn production set a record last year of 13.15 billion bushels, from 12.1 billion in 2008 and 13 billion in 2007.
SOYBEAN PRODUCTION INCREASES
Nationally, soybean production set a record, too.
In North Dakota, soybean output was up, also, to 116 million bushels from 105 million in 2008, as farmers planted a record 3.9 million acres, partly instead of corn.
Minnesota soybean production was a record 285 million bushels, up from 265 million in 2008.
One crop that North Dakota and Minnesota are most equal on is potatoes: last year North Dakota produced 19.1 million hundredweight and Minnesota 20.7 million. The two states together make up the third-biggest spud growing region in the nation, according to the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association based in East Grand Forks. Together, the two states raised 9.2 percent of the nation’s total spud production
North Dakota led the nation last year in producing sunflower seeds, growing 1.3 billion pounds, 43 percent of the nation’s total of 3 billion pounds.
North Dakota raised nearly all the nation’s flaxseed last year, producing 7 billion bushels, 95 percent of the nation’s 7.4 million bushels. Average yields in North Dakota went up to 24 bushels an acre, from 17 in 2008.
Sugar beet growers in North Dakota and Minnesota produced 52 percent of the nation’s crop last year, 10.5 million tons in Minnesota and 4.8 million tons in North Dakota. Average yields were 23.5 tons an acre in Minnesota and 22 tons in North Dakota.
North Dakota dominates the canola market, too, growing 90 percent of the nation’s 1.47 billion pounds last year, or 1.33 billion pounds. While acreage in North Dakota was down, the average canola yield rocketed up an astounding 21.6 percent to a record 1,840 pounds per acre.
North Dakota also continued to lead the nation in production of dry edible beans, although the state’s production was down 15 percent because of the late, wet spring and cool summer. Minnesota’s dry bean production was down 11 percent in 2009. But nationally, dry bean production was down 1 percent, at 25.4 million hundredweight, in 2009.
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