Haines says flood loss is 15 to 20 percent of his acres

A few weeks ago, Mitchell, South Dakota farmer Bruce Haines reported that because of intermittent rain, his spring planting had been delayed past Mother’s Day, the point on the calendar at which he sets his sights on being finished. Shortly after that conversation, as everyone is aware, a large part of Eastern South Dakota was visited by a multi-day deluge, including more than 10 inches that fell on Haines’ place in three days.

“To put it all in perspective, since January 1 this year, we’ve received 21.98 inches of rain. If you compare that to last year at this same time, we’d had 9.19 inches of rain, so it’s quite a stark change,” said Haines, a director on the South Dakota Soybean Research and Promotion Council. “I believe the drought is broken.”

The flooding, of course, is devastating to crops that have had to endure standing or rushing water. In Haines’ case, aside from row crops, he grows quite a bit of alfalfa.

“The alfalfa is pretty devested. Corn is coming back out of it, surprisingly. The water’s receded, the sun has come out. There’s a lot of acres lost, obviously. It’s broke off, but that that’s able to stand and is fighting for its life, it’s got a chance,” he said. “On my particular farm, I suppose I lost 15 to 20 percent of my acres.”

Haines compares the latest downpour to a similar amount he had in 2019. The difference is the heavy rain five years earlier came in September, following a dry summer and allowing a greater amount of the water to soak in.

Haines’ position on a local governing body steers his attention to farmers’ need for workable thoroughfares from farm to market at harvest time.

“I’m on a township board and so we had to do road damage assessments. And inside of our township, we had 25 major damages where water had washed across the road,” said Haines. “In the next 90 days, we have to have those roads back in shape.”

There are lessons learned from heavy rains, according to Haines, after seeing less erosion scarring from the downpour on lands where conservation measures had been applied.

“Those conservation practices hold more waters to the soil and the runoff is not as sharp and severe,” he said. “And if there were any doubters about conservation, to go through this, you’re a hundred percent believer in conservation after seeing this, because conservation is a way to maintain the integrity of the soils you have.”

Haines says he might have to topdress his corn with fertilizer because of what was leached away by the rain, but he learns more with each passing season and with each severe weather event.

“Mother Nature is obviously going to throw some more curve balls at us,” Haines surmised, “but we’re going to learn and grow and be better at maintaining these crops during these heavy rainfall periods.”