AGWEEKTV

Red River Valley farmers look for solutions to three generations of cropland flooding

Ann Bailey — Mon, 30 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

OSLO, Minn. — Miles from Oslo, thousands of acres in farmland in seven Minnesota and North Dakota townships along the Red River still were under water in late May, weeks after the Red River spilled its banks.

Farmers who raise crops on the inundated fields were not surprised by the flooding, which frequently occurs during the spring and sometimes in the fall, too, but they were frustrated.

The flooding has destroyed agricultural land, washed out their township roads and caused thousands of dollars of damage to a railroad line that carries cars filled with wheat to the West Coast and southern United States.

For example, several years ago, the acreage of land that had been flooded was appraised at $1,500 per acre, while land with a similar soil type that had not been flooded was appraised at $3,800 per acre, said Gary Babinski, who farms in Pulaski Township, North Dakota.

“At today’s prices, that would be $6,000 (per acre) land. The flood land still is appraised at $1,500," Babinski said.

Delayed planting also causes the farmers economic losses.

“In 2009, I had water on my land for 59 days,” Babinski said.

This year, when commodity prices are high, prevented planting isn’t an attractive option.

“The opportunities are there to have a good paying crop,” said Derek Gowan, who farms land in Turtle River Township, North Dakota. He hopes that once he is able to plant, his fields will produce near-average yields.

But the farmers' exasperation stemmed not only from the financial losses that the flood has caused, but also from their belief that they have a well-researched, workable solution to mitigate it but can't because they don’t have funding to implement it.

The farmers’ $133.4 million flood reduction plan is the work of a group called Border Township Associative Group, which was formed nine years ago.

The seven farmers who make up BTAG group each represent a township — Turtle River in Grand Forks County, North Dakota; Walshville, in Walsh County, North Dakota; Big Woods, Forks, Higdem and Oak Park Townships in Minnesota; and the city of Oslo.

The group members' intent was to have civil conversations about a contentious water issue that 40 years earlier resulted in their parents and grandparents being engaged in a legal dispute over agricultural levees that were erected on both sides of the Red River.

The disagreement over the levees began in 1975 when Minnesota landowners built dikes to protect their land from a summer Red River flood. After the Minnesota landowners built the dikes, in turn, North Dakota farmers responded by constructing dikes on their side of the river, and a legal battle ensued.

A federal court order attempted to solve the dispute by ordering that by Oct. 31, 1986, the Minnesota and North Dakota dikes were to be lowered to the level of a 36-foot flood in Oslo, according to Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald newspaper archives.

Flood stage of the Red River in Oslo is 28 feet, the National Weather Service said.

Since 1986, flooding of the Red River at Oslo has increased and frequently has reached heights of 38 feet.

This spring, the river crested at 37.57 feet.

Border Township Associative Group members believe that improved drainage has resulted in more water flowing from Fargo, North Dakota, downstream to Oslo.

“This year, we’re seeing 60,000 to 70,000 cubic feet per second we’re managing through the area. A big flood in Fargo would be 7,000 cubic feet per second, a tenth of what we’re dealing with here,” said James Bergman, a BTAG member who farms in Higdem Township, Minnesota, near Oslo.

Once the water reaches Oslo, a highway bridge built in 1958 and a railroad bridge constructed just after the turn of the 20th century bottles up the water, according to a 2018 study by Houston Engineering, based in Fargo, North Dakota.

The $360,000 study requested by Border Township Associative Group was funded by the Minnesota Legislature and North Dakota Water Board.

The study showed that the openings of the Oslo Highway Bridge, the Highway 317 Bridge — located 14 miles north of Oslo — and the Marais Bridge — located about two miles west of Oslo in North Dakota — allow significantly less water to pass through them than bridges north and south of Oslo.

Right now, the Oslo Highway Bridge and the Marais Bridge allow passage of 17,308 square feet of water, and the Highway 317 bridge allows passage of 16,318 square feet of water. The Border Township Associate Group members propose the Oslo Highway Bridge and the Marais Bridge be expanded to allow 47,000 and the Highway 317 bridge be expanded to allow 51,600 square feet.

The Kennedy Bridge over U.S. Highway 2 —19 miles south of Oslo — allows 30,070 cubic feet of water to flow through, and the Drayton Bridge — 26 miles downstream of Oslo — allows 57,623 feet of waterflow.

Besides the replacement of the three highway bridges, BTAG members say the railroad bridge, built just after the turn of the 20th century, also should be reconstructed.

“It's a large bill, overall, but yet, we’re protecting the interstate, we’re protecting the railroad," Bergman said. “Three percent of this nation's wheat goes through this railroad through Oslo, and that’s 17% of North Dakota wheat.

"The burden we’re carrying to fix this thing that happened in 1905 — we really need state and federal money to do it,” Bergman said.

A key to funding is support from more than 20 state, county and township agencies, and a rail company. During the past nine years, members have met with dozens of prospective partners.

“We have met (with stakeholders from) local water boards to emergency managers, to departments of transportation in both states to county boards, to townships and cities,” Bergman said.

“They’re not saying no. They’re saying, 'How are you going to pay for it?'” Bergman said.

Under the BTAG proposal, North Dakota’s share of Phase 1 of the three-phase project is estimated at $55.5 million and Minnesota's at $30 million, for a combined total cost of $85.58 million.

The group a year ago formed a 501(c)4 non-profit organization called Oslo Region Joint Powers Board, which allows it to apply for federal funding.

The farmers had hoped that the Minnesota Legislature would vote to provide funding for $20 million of Phase 1 of the project before the 2022 session ended. Minnesota Sen. Mark Johnson, a Republican who represents northwest Minnesota in District 1, introduced S.F. No. 1154 this legislative session, which would have appropriated $20 million in fiscal year 2024 for Phase 1.

The bulk of that funding — $17.45 million — would be used to extend the Oslo Highway bridge when it is reconstructed. The 64-year-old Oslo Bridge is slated to be replaced in a few years, and BTAG believes that will be an opportune time to build a longer bridge than the existing one. The remaining $2.55 million would be used for reconstruction of the Highway 317 Bridge, which is located in Marshall County at the Minnesota-North Dakota border.

While the BTAG had high hopes that the bill would go through, the Minnesota Legislature did not take any action on the bill before it closed its session at midnight on May 23. Some legislative watchers believe there will be a special session to take action on bills that weren't taken up during the recent session. Bergman didn't want to speculate about whether that would occur, but he remained hopeful that the bill could be included if a special session is called.

"I still think we're in the play, like everyone else," Bergman said.

He and the other BTAG members believe the large price tag and collaboration between township, county and state, individuals and agencies is necessary because the flooding of cropland has been occurring for nearly half a century, and has caused damage and destruction for three generations of farmers.

Bergman notes that while the Oslo flood mitigation project has a hefty price tag, it pales in comparison to the $3 billion Fargo Diversion Project. Meanwhile, he and the other BTAG members say they are carrying a large financial and logistical burden that should be shared by other affected individuals and agencies.

If the Minnesota Legislature would approve the $20 million request — representing only 15% of the total mount of the estimated project cost — Bergman said it would be a good start that would encourage other groups on both sides of the Red River to give financial support.

“This is certainly a sparkplug to get it going,” he said. ”We’re carrying a pretty burden and help from anybody. We’re carrying a lot of load for the whole drainage system.”

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A ‘derecho’ has its long-term effects

Mikkel Pates — Sat, 28 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

Definition:Derecho (“də-ˈrā-(ˌ)chō”): A large, fast-moving complex of thunderstorms with powerful straight-line winds that cause widespread destruction. – Merriam Webster

VOLGA, S.D. — I knew when I got off the phone that I would have to go.

I had called my brother, Mark Pates, about the “derecho” storm that hit the evening of May 12, 2022.

“You guys all right down there?” I asked.

“We’re fine,” said Mark, who farms near Volga, South Dakota. But yes, they had damage. Yes, they’re digging out. We grew up in nearby Brookings.

Mark, 67, is retired from a career as a mechanic and raises sheep and crops with his wife, Phyllis (Berkland) Pates, on their “Stoney Hill Farm.” They farm with their son, Kevin, and his wife Courtney and their three young children, who live in a separate farmstead about a mile across the section. They raise sheep, corn, soybeans and alfalfa.

“How did the storm go for you?” I asked.

“We were lucky,” Mark said.

'Football' shaped light

Luck is a matter of perspective in things like this. The winds were probably 90 mph or better, probably not much different than winds clocked at 96 mph at Wentworth, South Dakota. A 61-year-old woman died down there because a chunk of wood blasted through the vehicle she was in.

About the same time, Mark and Phyllis were caught in their vehicle, returning from an errand in town. About a mile from home the storm hit. It got pitch black, and they could only see a small, lighted area in their windshield — “the size of a football" — where the headlights converged. Mark was barely able to see the turnoff for their driveway and inched their way toward their double garage. But — happily — they didn’t try to park inside.

As the storm raged, Mark and Phyllis waited it out for 45 minutes, too scared to get out of the car.

When it was all over, the roof of that garage had lifted from its moorings, spun around in some trees and landed in the side yard that they walk through every day. Across the yard, an old hay shed near the barn shifted and collapsed in a heap. Trees were toppled or damaged everywhere, often "root-balled." And of course, there was "tin" everywhere, in the trees.

Inconvenient.

But they were OK.

Ditto for Kevin, whose family hunkered down in the basement of their farm home. He had gone out to secure things in their new Morton building but stayed there. (Courtney phoned him to ask if he wasn't coming in, but he said he'd wait it out in the barn.)

Always on the hunt for “news,” I asked Mark if he knew of anyone who had bigger farm damage. No specifics. Mark had seen the news of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's hometown of Castlewood, South Dakota, where a tornado ripped through the town. He didn’t have anything like that. Nothing like the tornadoes in the Willmar, Minnesota area.

A few nights later, I called Mark again. He described how he and other parishioners had pulled together at the nearby, historic Lake Campbell Lutheran Church, and gathered to remove the row of evergreens out front that had toppled and blocked access to the building which — miraculously — was not damaged.

No, he hadn’t gotten to clearing that garage yet.

“If Barb and I came down there, would you have something for us to do?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said.

Just a storm

We spent two and a half days at the farm, using drills and hex wrench heads, removing tin from wood and piling up the twisted pieces for recycling. We cut rafters and walls apart. Mark expertly moved used a Bobcat and a loader tractor to haul it out of the farmstead to be burned at a later date. Brother Merritt came too, as did Niece Kari Pates, who helped with kids. We got to eat fresh, road-ditch asparagus, with some of the main courses.

It’s hard to see how storm recovery fits into schedules that are already full.

Kevin works full-time at the South Dakota Soybean plant and was trying to get the crops in the ground. Courtney is an emergency room nurse in Brookings, working nights. Phyllis is busy, caring for the three young kiddos, including a baby. Mark is busy, finishing the last of the lambing and trying to finish up the planting. He does some local trucking.

Me? I had to get back to the business of reporting.

As we drove back to Fargo, we commented about the work ahead, the tree work, the hauling, the rebuilding. But we thought about the farmers and others fleeing destruction from war in Ukraine, or trying to farm around man-made destruction that is deliberate and endless.

This derecho was bad, but at least the storm is over.

We are lucky, indeed.

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Crushing it: North Dakota ready to ride wave of demand for soybean oil and meal

Jeff Beach — Mon, 23 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

In just a couple of years, North Dakota will go from a state that exported 90% of its soybeans to a state that will process and add value to more than half its soybean crop.

“It’s huge,” said Joe Morken, a farmer and former chairman of the North Dakota Soybean Council.

The transformation will come with the construction of soybean crushing plants at Spiritwood, near Jamestown, and at Casselton, about 20 miles west of Fargo.

“You don’t even have to deliver to this plant to see the economic impacts,” Morken said a day after the Casselton City Council on May 2 approved a permit for the North Dakota Soybean Processors to build just west of the town.

North Dakota Soybean Processors, a partnership between Minnesota Soybean Processors and Louisiana-based Consolidated Grain and Barge, or CGB, hope to start construction this summer.

At Spiritwood, Archer Daniels Midland is partnering with Marathon Petroleum to convert the former Cargill malt plant into North Dakota's first dedicated soybean processing plant.

The Green Bison plant will send all of its soybean oil to the Marathon refinery in Dickinson, North Dakota, to be further refined into renewable diesel.

It’s that renewable fuel market that is really driving the industry, said Jeramie Weller, the general manager of the Minnesota Soybean Processors plant in Brewster, Minnesota, which also produces biodiesel.

“With renewable diesel and the price of soybean oil on the rise, there have been many plants that have been announced and are being built,” Weller said.

Minnesota has a 20% biofuel blend mandate in Minnesota for part of the year.

“We’re one of two major suppliers for that mandate in Minnesota,” Weller said.

But he said what’s really pushing the renewable industry along is the expansion of their low carbon fuel standard in states like California and Washington.

“So renewable diesel and biodiesel have both become a large player in the state of California, also now in Washington because of the reduction in carbon footprint that it gives,” Weller said.

“We’re thrilled,” said Connie Ova, executive director of the Jamestown/Stutsman County Development Corporation, of the ADM-Marathon partnership.

She said demolition on what used to be a Cargill malting plant is moving along rapidly. The Cargill plant was past its useful life and she is happy to see it being replaced with a “state of the art facility.”

She also said BNSF Railway is in the process of taking bids for additional track on the rail loop that will serve the Green Bison plant and also serves the Dakota Spirit Ag Energy plant that makes ethanol from corn at the Spiritwood Energy Park.

“There’s lot of synergy there,” Ova said.

The two plants are being built in counties that are not only the top producers of soybeans in North Dakota, but rank among the top 20 producing counties nationwide.

“North Dakota is one of the top 10 soybean producing states in the United States. It is the only one that does not have a dedicated soybean processing facility built in it … the least has two,” said Scott White of North Dakota Soybean Processors. “The whole idea is to add value to North Dakota produced soybeans.”

“We have had some outside studies that have been done by soybean growers in the area and they figured maybe 5 to 10 cents a bushel as a basis differential premium for having dedicated soy processing in the state of North Dakota,” White said.

Processing 90 million bushels at a 5 to 10 cent premium, “the math tells you it's a bump of $5 million to $9 million,” White said.

Nancy Johnson, executive director of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association, said a 5 cent per bushel premium is “very conservative” but she hasn’t seen detailed studies on a potential economic impact.

North Dakota soybeans have mostly been shipped through ports in the Pacific Northwest for China and some other Asian markets. When a trade war erupted between the U.S. and China in 2018, North Dakota soybean growers were collateral damage.

Johnson said having local markets will be a welcome change.

“It’s a huge opportunity for North Dakota farmers,” Johnson said. “Clearly there will be an impact.”

But she said just how big an impact will become clearer this fall when the Green Bison plant starts offering contracts for delivery in 2023.

One hoped for side-effect of the soybean crushing plant is to spur along North Dakota’s livestock industry, which lags behind its neighbors.

Johnson said she also hoped that the availability of soybean meal might translate into more livestock in the state.

“We’re optimistic that this might lead to additional animal agriculture blossoming in North Dakota," she said. “Soybean meal is a high quality feedstuff for hogs and chickens in particular.”

Weller said the Brewster plant sells a lot of soybean meal to the hog and poultry in its area of southwest Minnesota and neighboring states.

“This may give the state of North Dakota the opportunity to grow that industry,” Weller said.

Weller said there also are market opportunities in Canada and Mexico and growing demand in the U.S.

“If you look at the domestic meal market over the last 10 years, it continues to grow by 3 to 6% every year because of the livestock industry,” Weller said. “We expect that growth to continue.”

Much of the soybean meal produced in North Dakota also will likely be shipped out by rail.

“That is where the railroad is key,” said White, with Casselton being served by BNSF and Red River Valley and Western railroads, making it the best location it could find in North Dakota.

Unlike Brewster, there won’t be biodiesel coming out of Casselton, but it could be shipped to a biodiesel refinery. The oil will be food grade, meaning it could be used for french fries or any of a number of other uses. But end-users of the oil have not been locked in yet.

Crushing party

North Dakota might be a little late to the soybean crushing party but the party's still going strong.

Jeramie Weller, general manager of Minnesota Soybean Processors plant at Brewster in southwest Minnesota, can look around and see soybean processing projects in every direction:

Iowa: Work is underway at Shell Rock Soy Processing in Shell Rock, and Platinum Crush at Alta is expected to be operational in 2024.

Minnesota: CHS has added capacity at its crush facility in Fairmont, Minnesota, and plants to upgrade it Mankato, Minnesota, facility as well.

South Dakota: The South Dakota Soybean Processors in February announced plans to build a multi-seed processing plant near Mitchell to be operational in 2025.It will be able to process soybeans and sunflowers.

Weller said a crush plant doesn’t just benefit the co-op members or farmers that sell to the plant, but many elevators in the region. He said 65% to 70% of its beans come from elevators.

“It gives the local elevators a very good market,” said Ron Obermoller, a member of the Minnesota Soybean Processors board of directors.

“They (the elevators) watch the basis and we (the farmers) watch the price,” Obermoller said.

Obermoller said he would have liked to have seen the co-op have a greater percentage of the ownership in the Casselton plant, but they have a conservative board and “didn’t want to risk too much.”

There will not be a separate set of shares for North Dakota Soy Processors. Farmers interested in shares will buy into Minnesota Soy Processors, with Weller saying some already have bought shares through the co-op’s website.

Weller said stock shares have been increasing in value steadily, especially since the Casselton project was announced in December.

As of May 16, the most recent transaction had been for $5.50 per share but there were offers for $5.70 and in April there was a large transaction for $5.75 per share. The minimum buy-in is 2,000 shares.

Last year, Minnesota Soybean Processors paid a dividend of 80 cents per share, Weller said.

Obermuller said that translates to about another $2 million in income for the 2,300 or so co-op members that includes producers in South Dakota and Iowa.

Minnesota Soybean Processors began crushing soybeans in 2003 and then in 2005 added a biodiesel plant that was expanded in 2017. About half the soybean oil it produces goes to biodiesel.

Co-op’s roots

So how did the soybean crushing party get started?

“It kind of came together with a bunch of farmers standing in line waiting to dump beans at the local elevator, said Obermoller, who was part of the group that founded Minnesota Soy Processors in the late 1990s. “Sometimes it took two-three hours to get rid of a load of beans at the elevator. You stand around and talk, that’s really where it started.”

After taking about four years to get the Brewster plant up and running, Obermoller said the Casselton timeline looks very different: “What’s going on up there is warp speed compared to what we are used to.”

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Drought forces dairy into difficult selloff decision, but farmer hopes to rebuild

Jeff Beach — Mon, 16 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

UNDERWOOD, Minn. — April 16 went about as well as could be expected for Quaal Dairy.

The dairy that has been operating near Underwood in northwest Minnesota was selling off most of its milking herd.

“Quite good,” Vernon Quaal says of the Easter weekend sale. The cows sold for an average of $1,625 per head.

“We gave most of it to the bank,” Quaal says. The proceeds are being used to pay creditors, secured and unsecured, after the dairy filed for bankruptcy in 2016.

“Going in (to the bankruptcy), we owed over $1 million,” Quaal says. “We paid off half of that before the sale.”

He called the bankruptcy an “extra struggle to make all those extra payments besides trying to cash-flow the operation.”

While getting out of debt is a good feeling, that wasn’t the driving factor behind the sale. As the drought of 2021 decimated forage crops in northern Minnesota, Quaal says he knew it was going to make feeding a herd of 300 Holsteins too expensive not to cut back.

“I told some of my friends, ‘As soon as I’m out of corn silage, the cows are going to be going.’ They thought I was bluffing,” Quaal says.

But the sale is not the end for Quaal Dairy. Quaal kept back about 60 of the lowest producing cows and is still milking them.

Then there’s the 65 bred heifers in a free-stall barn, ready to start calving about Sept. 1.

“That’s my future herd,” Quaal says, looking at the heifers. “That’s my hope.”

No easy path

But it will take more than a healthy crop of calves to build Quaal Dairy back up.

While a wet fall and spring have pulled northern Minnesota out of a drought, the cost of feed is still high and so are many of the other expenses that go into a dairy operation, such as fuel, parts and building materials needed to make repairs, and the cost of labor.

While price of milk has gone up, it hasn’t been as dramatic as other commodities. “The milk price didn’t double,” he says.

Obtaining financing is harder for the livestock operations than for crop farmers, he says.

With some barns standing empty, Quaal is hoping to make some needed repairs around the farm.

But instead of managing eight employees, five who had been living at the farm, he’s doing most of the milking himself. He says that’s proving to be more work than managing the larger operation.

But he has hired one worker and his parents, who built the dairy, still provide some support.

Vernon Quaal’s father, John Quaal, 77, had been telling him for a couple of years that it was time to sell the cows, in part because he couldn’t provide the same level of help as he had in years past.

Drought's long shadow

While the drought may seem like a distant memory as a cold wet spring has kept farmers from getting in the field, it is still very fresh for Vernon Quaal.

“I’m feeding hay I normally would not feed,” Quaal says, looking at some of the baled hay on the farm.

In 2021, “I baled anything I could,” he says, such as cattails that snapped of easily in the dry conditions.

The farm has three large concrete bunkers for corn that now are mostly empty. Tires that had been used to hold down tarps over the corn are piled on the ground.

Quaal did recently get a crop insurance check from lost hay production in 2021. He says the check was more than he expected but he lamented how long the process takes.

“I needed that money a long time ago,” he says.

The Minnesota Legislature also has yet to pass a drought relief package that was proposed last fall.

He says he did take advantage of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Dairy Margin Coverage program to lock in some profits, but he says not all his neighbors in Otter Tail County did.

He says dairy farmers are “selling cows left and right,” being bought up by larger dairies.

There are about 2,000 dairies left in Minnesota and Lucas Sjostrom, executive director of the Minnesota Milk Producers Association, says the number of dairies has been dropping 4% to 8% per year. There are some dairies starting up, so the percentage of dairies closing is higher than what that figure shows.

At any given time, there are probably hundreds of dairy producers on the brink of folding up, he says.

“The drought just compounds that,” Sjostrom says.

But the fact that milk prices are relatively strong helped Quaal Dairy get good prices for the cows it auctioned off.

“Profit potential is outstanding for the next eight months or so,” Sjostrom says.

Highs and lows

Quaal Dairy also was hit by drought in the late 1980s. But Quaal says that because the dairy has grown in size since then, the impact of the 2021 drought has been magnified.

Vernon Quaal bought his own small farm a few miles away from his parents in 1989 and continues to farm that land.

Quaal says the bitter cold winter of 1995-96 was a bigger setback for the dairy. The dairy had just made a big jump from 100 to 265 cows.

“We weren’t ready to handle sub-zero temperatures day after day,” Quaal says. He estimates the dairy lost $1 million that year.

But the Quaals remained dedicated to dairy farming. Vernon points to awards that the dairy earned over the years, such as the 2010 Premier Dairy Award for West Otter Tail County and Connie Quaal being named Farm Woman of the Year for the county in 2005. There are lists printed out from years past showing Quaal Dairy among the top producers for Dairy Herd Improvement Association in Otter Tail County and among the top 200 in Minnesota.

Vernon Quaal says, "I always knew I wanted to milk cows." In 1986, he started attending the University of Minnesota Crookston because of its dairy program, a program that no longer exists at UMC.

He's endured the highs and lows, and now he’s trying to hang on and rebuild.

"I want to keep going at it," he says. “It was my dream.”

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Music master Anne Waltner comes home to partner in parents’ farm

Mikkel Pates — Mon, 16 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

PARKER, S.D. — After 20 years away from the farm, Anne Waltner, in her late 30s, returned from her life as a concert pianist in the Eastern U.S. to take over the family corn and soybean operation from her parents, Keith and Sharon Waltner in South Dakota.

Few farmers can image the multi-tasking going on here:

From 2010 to 2015, Anne returned from her academic world to rent soybean and corn acres from her parents. In 2016 she became a full partner in a 1,600-acre corn and soybean farm with her parents. In October 2015, she married Rolf Olson, a non-farming college music professor and trumpet player, 16 years her senior. On May 18, 2017, she gave birth to triplet daughters — Alice, Margreta “Greta,” and Lydia. On Feb. 1, 2019, she was diagnosed with cancer (chronic lymphocytic leukemia), and is doing fine under treatment. She completed treatments in January 2022, when her blood work showed things are normal.

And yes, she still is a concert pianist.

Not her dream

Born in January 1978, Anne came of age on in the tumultuous 1980s. Aware of the financial stresses of the time, she did not dream of going farming. In seventh grade, she shifted public school to the Freeman (South Dakota) Academy, a Mennonite high school with 43 total students. Most of her classmates were farm kids.

"We all went to school, smelling like hogs." Anne recalled. “In my sophomore demonstration speech I brought in two little pigs and castrated them." Everyone in the class was “completely bored,” because they all knew about that.

Anne loved animals and crops but saw the whipsaw of ag finance in the farm credit crisis years of high interest and land deflation. She thrived in a community, centered around the rural Salem Mennonite Church.

The community has an oddly cosmopolitan vibe.

Roughly half of the population in the area is Mennonites. Mennonites, like other Anabaptist denominations — Hutterites, Amish, Church of the Brethren, are pacifists and typically register as conscientious objectors. Many adults in the church — like her parents — served stints in overseas in relief and development work, in lieu of military service.

“There are a lot of over-educated musical farmers in this area,” she said. “I didn’t know, growing up, just how rarefied that air was.”

At age 4, Anne took piano lessons from the president of Freeman Junior College, associated with the academy. She went to Sioux Falls for violin lessons. She played in youth orchestras, alongside students that often were from large, public high schools. She graduated in a class of 11 in 1996.

She went on to Goshen (Indiana) College (her mother’s alma mater). She graduated in 2000 in biology and piano performance. She spent three years teaching music at an international school in India, then returned to the U.S. for a master’s in solo piano performance at the Chicago College of Performing Arts. She went on to Cleveland Institute of Music, obtaining her Doctorate of Musical Arts in “collaborative piano performance” in May 2010.

On their shoulders

Anne's parents Keith and Sharon graduated from Freeman Academy — he in 1963 and she in 1966. Keith went on to the Freeman Junior College. They married in 1969. He went on to a Mennonite college in Kansas, and then earned a master’s degree in Greeley, Colorado. He taught school in Indiana, while Sharon took nurse’s training at a Mennonite college Goshen, Indiana.

In lieu of military service, Keith and Sharon worked in Indonesia from 1970 to 1973.

They came home to rent his parents’ farmland and to farm with Sharon’s parents and brother. Keith and Sharon had Tim in 1974, and they moved onto their current farmstead in 1975. Anne was born in 1978, and her sister, “Mary” (later, Mariell) in 1980.

In 1983, they built a “super-insulated house and finished it from farm cash flow over seven years, even as they built new livestock facilities. By 1984, the Waltners were named a Master Pork Producers.

They farrowed up to 160 sows. The kids helped move pigs and with chores — giving shots, docking tails. Every week or so they’d take 35 head of finished hogs to market at the Morrell’s plant in Sioux Falls.

“That was an

event

,” Anne recalled, with joy. ”We got to go to Sioux Falls, and sometimes we got to eat at Bonanza!”

Anne remembered the scary side of the times, too. The emotional stress.

Notably, May 17, 1984, Jennis Hofer, a farmer in the neighborhood, shot and killed two neighbors Andrew Wipf, Sr., and his son, Andrew Wipf, Jr., ostensibly for draining water on his land. Hofer was sentenced to life in prison.

With the strong family help, Waltners were able to keep their farm debt down. In the 1990s, they were able to purchase more farmland. The children — livestock helpers — went off to college and other careers; Tim became a neurosurgeon in Kansas City, Missouri; Anne pursued her music; and Mariell “Mary” studied to music and obtained a career as a life coach.

Without the family labor, the Waltners quit hogs in 1998. They quit feeding cattle in 2010.

The garden plot

In 2010, Keith, then 65, started looking toward retiring on his crop farm.

“We were getting older and the kids weren’t here, and at the moment it looked like no one was really coming to take over,” Keith said.

Keith and Sharon offered to rent 127 of their acres of their farm Anne. She could take the soybean rotation, and she have full management and financial responsibility. They introduced her to their own loan officer at Farm Credit Services of America in Sioux Falls.

Anne remembered skipping her own doctoral graduation to come home and plant soybeans. In part, it was to whittle away at tens of thousands in debts she acquired in her doctoral program.

The 2010 crop year turned out to be a doozy for farm income. “I couldn’t believe the money we were making,” she said.

After planting, Anne returned to Cleveland to put on recitals. She applied for 56 jobs and landed one at West Virginia State University, near Charleston. Two years later, she shifted to Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she taught three years.

Back at the farm, in 2012 her drought-stunted soybeans averaged 13 bushels per acre. “Crop insurance saved our bacon,” she said.

In 2014 she added another 104 acres of corn, for a total of about 230 acres. In May 2015, she skipped the last two days of finals at EMU and flew home to help plant.

On the personal side, she was 37, living in her parents’ basement. Her former sixth grade music teacher suggested she meet Rolf Olson, director of bands at the University of South Dakota at Vermillion. Despite their age difference, the two hit it off. They married in the courthouse October 2015.

Anne had not been desperate to become a mother. But she had frozen eggs in case she would ever want children. Modern medicine brought them triplet girls.

Shifting focus

Keith always knew that if any of his kids would return to the farm, it would probably be Anne

“She was very good — intuitive, good with machinery, good with livestock,” he said.

Sharon had been a good role model as a woman farmer — caring for the hogs, doing tillage, cutting silage, unloading. Anne describes Keith as something of a “feminist” in sharing responsibilities. Sharon is a multitasker.

Besides the farm work, Sharon had her degree in nursing and accumulated a master’s in counseling. She still works at Avera Education Systems and with the Mennonite community, setting up workshops on conflict mediation, and works in the church.

As Anne’s home got busier with triplets and then cancer, Keith and Sharon stepped up.

In 2021, Keith and Sharon bought a home in Freeman, and Anne, Rolf and the girls moved into the home Anne's parents had enjoyed for decades. (Olson had become director of bands at Northern State University in Aberdeen, but retired this spring to come to the farm and help manage the kids and home.)

Collaboration is a key word in the Olson/Waltner homes.

Keith and Anne work in the shop or field. Sharon handles much of the kid duty, getting the girls in to child care at Freeman and getting them back to the farm. Sharon embraces the tasks with a practicality.

“We are working to hopefully get her established,” Sharon said. “Maybe that’s what keeps us young, but at the end of the day, we can be tired. It has changed our plans and altered our focus.”

Anne is growing more comfortable with the farming duties. She embraces the technology of farming, but admits all of the trouble-shooting and problem-solving can be daunting.

“How to fix, how to manipulate things, physically. How to jerry rig, and offer myself the best physical advantage when I’m trying to work on things,” she said. Dad still picks up the phone when she calls.

An anomaly

She acknowledges that not everyone accepts a woman as a farmer.

She takes it in stride.

“Some of these seed guys wanted to talk to Dad and not me,” she said. She remembered one situation: “No matter how many times my dad said, ‘

She’s

the farmer, you’ll have to talk to

her

,’" they couldn’t understand that she is more than Keith’s “helper.”

More amusing, some people look past her and approach her husband Rolf about farming purchases.

“He can’t speak that language,” she said, noting that his gifts are elsewhere. He retired from full-time teaching at Northern State University in Aberdeen, and now is back at the farmstead, managing the kitchen and the home.

Anne looks ahead with gratitude and hope.

Happily, the cancer has backed off. She tolerated the immunotherapy infusions in Sioux Falls, but likely will take pills daily for the rest of her life. In January 2022, her numbers were all in a normal range. She is grateful for “good science” and the power of hearing prayer. “I

know

this is how it gets done,” she said.

And Anne remains a professional pianist. It's not convenient for farming, but Keith encourages her to take “gigs." She was named principal keyboard artist for the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, where Rolf is in the trumpet section. She serves on the board of her beloved Freeman Academy.

“I have never worked this hard,” Anne said. “I love what I do. I get to work with all of my favorite people. Who gets to do that?” And then she adds: “Can

you

think of anybody luckier than me?”

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When Charlie Wachlin couldn’t speak for himself, his wife stepped in to fight for his life

Michael Johnson — Sat, 14 May 2022 15:00:00 GMT

WADENA, Minn. — Without an advocate at his side, fighting for his life when he couldn’t, Charlie Wachlin believes he would have died from adverse effects of COVID-19.

Death was absolutely at his door. According to his primary provider, his heart was shocked three different times as his body fought to survive without the help of machines. He was told he was on the brink of death on 12 occasions.

Wachlin's normally deep voice is much more quiet than it was last year as he continues therapy four days a week at Wadena’s Tri-County Health Care. He is slower moving, a change of pace for the enduro racer and hard-working manager of Wadena’s RDO potato farm. He’s working to rebuild his body to what it was before it basically shut down last October.

“I went from perfect almost, to almost dead,” Wachlin said of his body’s response to getting the virus.

Wachlin contracted COVID-19 in September and was admitted to Lakewood Health System in Staples, Minnesota, with COVID pneumonia on Oct. 2. The next day he was airlifted to Sanford Fargo’s ICU with respiratory failure. He ended up spending 122 days away from home struggling to regain enough strength to breathe, talk, walk and do all the things he’s done as a husband, father, grandpa and as leader in his work place.

“My lung capacity may never be what it was,” Wachlin said from his home south of Wadena. Even so, he’s now able to be back to work and back home with his family. The illness and restrictions in place kept him separated from most of his family for nearly five months.

At the time of contracting COVID, his family had been sick, with mostly mild symptoms. Wachlin wasn’t one to let a little cold keep him from getting the potato harvest complete. The fall is a time for all hands on deck as the largest labor force of the potato season comes together to get the crop from the fields.

But when the symptoms persisted and pneumonia set in, things shifted drastically. He felt ill only for about four days, he said. In the intensive care unit, it became so bad that Wachlin’s wife Diane was asked about Charlie’s directives and had a doctor tell her there was nothing more they could do after Charlie had shown no improvement for weeks.

She was adamant that there must be something to do. She did what she could, including calling around for other options. She spent long days encouraging Charlie and at times, frustratingly pushing him to keep fighting. She missed just five days at his side throughout the ordeal, only to allow others to stop by and spend time with Charlie.

“Without her they probably would have shut the machines off,” Charlie said.

That’s just what one doctor suggested in November, that Charlie’s ventilator be stopped.

Some said it wasn’t worth fighting. Some said if he did make it, he’d be on oxygen in a nursing home the rest of his life. his condition was so bad he couldn’t be transported elsewhere, so Diane fought to get second opinions and find out what else they could do.

“I’m like, you gotta try something, what do we have to lose? You’re already telling me we should shut the machines off,” she recalled saying to hospital staff during their ICU stay.

Diane said his body was fighting the oxygen machine and he contracted pneumonia three times during the ordeal. After some adjustments to the ventilation machine, he showed signs of improvement.

When Charlie came around, he had no idea he'd been out of a conscious state for a couple months. It was a lot to take in. Cognitively, he was in good shape, but his body was extremely weak and numb.

It took some threats of finger nail painting, poking and prodding and no more back rubs to get Charlie to do some things he didn’t want to do, according to Diane.

She’d been trying to get a good reaction out of him for many days and it wasn’t until he welcomed her with “kissy lips” that she felt he’d finally made a turn for the better. It was a moment they both treasure.

Even with his spirits lifted, it would be a long road ahead for Charlie. He had been stationary so long he’d lost the feeling in his legs and had to build up strength to walk again. Through physical therapy, it was pain in his extremities that gave him the feeling that he was gradually getting his feeling back. Toe-by-toe, he started to make small movements again. After starting physical therapy in January, Charlie still had a brace for his drop foot in April, but other than the occasional use of a cane, he was able to get around well and was happy to be on his way to full recovery.

Charlie’s message to others out there is simple but difficult: Keep fighting and get yourself an advocate.

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Wolff's Suffolks takes lamb from pasture to pizza

Emily Beal — Sat, 07 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

OAKES, N.D. — For 40 years, a flock of Suffolk sheep have grazed on pastures of the Wolff farm. The family is now in the third generation of raising the black-faced breed, and they've leaned into taking their products directly from pasture to plate — or pizza.

“I was a partner with my dad for many years. My dad is actually still alive, but my daughters bought his ewes out now. So we’ve been a family affair,” Ron Wolff said. “We’ve been raising Suffolk sheep this whole time, it’s kind of our passion. It’s a breed we’ve held on to.”

Ron Wolff is the second generation to tend to the flock of Suffolk and greatly enjoys the breed’s size and the stark contrast between their black heads and tan wool. Their flock encompasses 60 ewes that the Wolffs sell to 4-H members and other youth, as well as to fellow sheep breeders. Wolff enjoys working closely with the 4-H members who choose to show the Suffolk breed, as that is what he brought into the show arena during his 4-H years, as did his daughters. Now, the Wolff family takes their stock to national shows, such as The North American Livestock Expedition that takes place in Louisville, Kentucky each fall.

Wanting a way to expand their business, the Wolffs acquired their meat license from the state of North Dakota in order to sell their lamb directly to consumers. Their business venture proved to be extremely successful, as they now have about 40 head butchered each year to keep up with demand. Through this new avenue, the Wolffs have been able to sell all their products directly to consumers, businesses or other sheep enthusiasts.

“I am proud to say that we have not gone to the sale barn with lambs in the last three years,” Wolff said.

On the farm, there is a meat shed lined with freezers full of Wolff’s Suffolk meat. From ribs to leg of lamb steak, there are a multitude of choices for consumers. Ron Wolff was particularly surprised with some of the requests and best-sellers, such as lamb heart, which he now keeps in stock.

In addition to selling their meat off the farm, Ron and his wife make the trek to the Red River Farmers Market in Fargo every other weekend from June through October to sell to consumers. The market has proven to be a vital part of their meat venture growing, as it has allowed them to make many crucial connections.

“I met Ron at the farmers market and talked to him and Beth and thought they were really cool. They started bringing ground lamb for me, and we’ve tried a few other cuts for things,” said Casey Absey, the founder and owner of Blackbird Woodfire Pizza located in downtown Fargo.

Blackbird is known for its unique woodfired pizzas. The restaurant not only uses the Wolff’s lamb on select pizzas, but also uses the meat for appetizers as well.

“I think it’s important to use all you can from around here because we are such a rich farming community,” Absey said. “Most of the customers appreciate that it comes from Ron’s farm.”

In addition to Blackbird Woodfire, Wolff said a new Lebanese restaurant in Fargo is also using their lamb in their dishes. The Wolffs enjoy connecting with consumers during their weekends at the Red River Farmers Market, believing it is more important now more than ever to tell the story of agriculture, as many consumers are wanting to listen to the story.

“They like the fact they know where it all comes from,” Wolff said.

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Small grains making small steps back into crop rotations

Jeff Beach — Mon, 02 May 2022 10:30:00 GMT

CANBY, Minn. — Spring wheat is only a small percentage of Goplen’s acres in southwest Minnesota, but they are far from insignificant.

And Jared Goplen, who also serves as a University of Minnesota Extension educator on crops and forage, is seeing more interest in small grains in traditional corn and soybean country for a few reasons:

Adding wheat into the crop rotation is a tool in weed and pest management. Prices for wheat and oats have been strong, making profitability more likely. He can use the crop to feed his livestock, perhaps more cheaply than buying feed, and also get some use out of the straw.

That leads to perhaps the most interesting reason Goplen plants wheat: He can get the crop off early enough to get alfalfa established in the same field, getting productivity out of those acres and essentially skipping an establishment year for his alfalfa.

“We’ve had really good luck with it,” said Goplen, who admits there is risk because it can be pretty dry when planting in August.

“Typically, you get just enough rain to get the plants going and then you have less weed pressure and you get a full year of production that year.”

Getting started

On a cold and windy April 25, Goplen already had gotten one small field planted to wheat a couple days prior and was getting started on a second field, with the intention of planting alfalfa after wheat harvest.

He was working just northwest of Canby, while most of his acres and his cattle are closer to Dawson. There wasn’t much planting activity to be found elsewhere in his part of southwest Minnesota.

“There’s not a lot of small grains in this area,” Goplen said.

But he said soil moisture was just about optimal. To the south and west, he said things were drier while to north around Morris where his Extension office is, heavy fall rains had created some real wet spots.

“You don’t have to go very far and it goes from too much to not enough,” Goplen said of soil moisture.

He had heard of a farmer who had already dared plant some corn near Canby, but the temps were still too cold for most.

He said he could see some green poking up on an alfalfa field and hoped it wouldn’t be damaged by the overnight cold that night.

But small grains can handle the cold, allowing Goplen to get a jump on spring planting.

In the more traditional spring wheat growing regions of northwest Minnesota and the Dakotas, fields had just gotten another round of snow or rain, keeping farmers out of the fields.

Spring wheat acres have been shrinking in recent years, but Goplen and others say there is more interest in small grains in Minnesota, at least on a small scale.

Piqued interest

Goplen has been part of an Extension small grains tour in southern Minnesota for the past five winters. He said a spike in oat prices got people’s attention before this year’s tour but then farmers can learn about some of the other benefits of small grains.

“People have a few fields here and there, maybe they’ve had some weed issues, some corn rootworm issues in their corn and soybeans, so people are looking for some other options,” Goplen said.

He has a field with waterhemp issues and is planting wheat there in hopes of getting a crop off before the waterhemp even has a chance to produce viable seeds.

“I figured it was a way to get on top of that, and I think a lot of people are in that same scenario where it’s a field-by-field case,” Goplen said.

Charlie Vogel, CEO of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, said that “weeds are just going to get tougher,” and concurred that small grains can play a role as a management tool.

“You’re going to see more complex rotations coming back,” Vogel said.

He also noted that trucking and supply issues also are an incentive for livestock producers to plant small grains. The crop can provide another homegrown feed source and straw for bedding, and a cover crop planted after harvest provides another area for grazing.

Alex Stade farms near New Prague, in southeast Minnesota, and has been able to find buyers, especially dairy farmers, for the straw from his fields of wheat and oats.

“A lot of people are looking for straw,” he said.

Vogel said small grains also are a part of the conversation for improving soil health in a world more focused on reducing its carbon footprint.

Competing for acres

Even with tight global supplies and the Russian invasion of Ukraine helping drive up wheat prices, there has been only a small uptick in wheat acres in Minnesota and nationally.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture prospective plantings report on March 31 had spring wheat up about 4% over 2021 in Minnesota, while North Dakota spring wheat acres were down. Durum wheat, grown for pasta, was the area where North Dakota was adding acres.

There would perhaps be more interest if corn and soybeans weren’t just as strong, making it hard to convince growers to experiment with something new when their tried and true corn and soybeans look to be profitable, even in the face of high input prices.

Another barrier for those growers is equipment.

“If you rewind the clock 30 years, every farm still had a drill,” Goplen said. “That’s maybe not the case anymore.”

So that might mean renting a grain drill from a neighbor, or some Soil and Water Conservation Districts have drills available for rent.

As for those input prices, Goplen said the bad thing about wheat is that it still needs a lot of nitrogen.

“So your nitrogen expenses are going to be similar to corn,” Goplen said. “But the good news is we can get by typically with a little lower levels of P and K. “

So he said this year that savings might be $80 or $100 per acre of small grains versus corn.

Another area of savings is herbicide and fungicide, where small grains can typically get by with one application of each.

“So there might be some savings there,” Goplen said.

For those growers who might be considering working small grains back into a rotation next year, Goplen says to keep in mind some herbicide use will prevent planting small grains onto those acres the following year.

While corn and soybeans are looking profitable this year, input costs continue to be volatile, as do the markets, and perhaps a short-season crop with an early planting window is a hedge against wild weather, like the spastic spring 2022 has provided.

To that end, Goplen says a way to manage risk is “putting your eggs in different baskets.”

“I’m wanting to have a few eggs in that wheat basket.”

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Weekend hobby turns into full-time agribusiness operation for Camp Aquila Pure Maple Syrup

Katie Pinke — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 10:30:00 GMT

DENT, Minn. — What was a weekend hobby turned into a thriving agribusiness for Stu and Corinne Peterson near Dent. For the past 22 years, they have harvested maple sap from trees on their property on Star Lake and turned it into Camp Aquila Pure Maple Syrup.

“We’re small peanuts compared to the big producers. There’s so much technology you can purchase, there’s so much efficiencies," Stu Peterson said. "We’re pretty labor intensive the way we do it, and so we can do it sized for my wife and I, and the kids when they show up, when the sap is running.”

Camp Aquila was a boys camp from the 1950s through the 1970s. Growing up in St. Paul, Stu Peterson had a childhood friend who attended the camp each summer, but he never visited until he was 19 years old. In 1983, Stu and his wife had the opportunity to purchase the property on contract for deed. For 20 years, they were weekenders, coming up from the Twin Cities to rural Ottertail County. The intention was always to keep the land whole, not breaking it up for development.

In 2000, the Petersons started tapping the sugar maples across the 120 wooded acres for sap. They built their full-time home on the property in 2004 and started what Stu calls “our own little food company.”

Stu wasn’t raised on a farm, but his father was an agriculture professor at the University of Minnesota.

“I grew three blocks from the St. Paul ‘farm campus,’ as we called it back in the day. My dad was an ag teacher, and that was my view of the world. The family farm was still owned by my dad and my aunt out in Waconia. As a little kid, I was peddling eggs, door to door, on the weekend, out in Waconia. I’ve just always in been in agribusiness and then got an ag economic/ ag business degree,” he said.

Stu's upbringing and education led him to a career in ag finance.

“For 40 years, I critiqued, advised and analyzed small agribusinesses and some very large ones. To sit on one side of the desk and then try to start up my own, you can relate," he said. "A number of my former customers in my other life were the sugarbeet operations. And so they’ve got their big factory, we’ve got our little factory. They harvest in the fall, we harvest in the spring.”

The Petersons' maple syrup operation has continued to grow. This year they have collected and processed about 8,200 gallons of maple sap from 1,200 trees, which boils down to about 240 gallons of syrup. Last year, they produced over 300 gallons of maple syrup with 370 gallons being their largest year of production.

“Everything here is in balance. Corinne and I can handle it. We can process it and we can market it,” Stu said.

They sell every drop they produce across 30 stores mostly in Minnesota.

Starting in the maple business, the Peterson initially went through the U.S. Department of Agriculture organic certification program which he said “got us in the door” at retailers.

Is all maple syrup organic? “Well, not certified organic,” Stu explained.

“We’re no longer certified organic. We’re not doing anything differently if we were, except for the fact when you get out to the woods, when you pull a tap, you put a little spot of paint on the tree so you can find a new spot next year. The organic people didn’t like me using paint on the trees in the woods, which wasn’t a big deal, but it helps me when we go back to tap to find new, fresh wood,” he said.

“The year we had a crop failure, I had to buy outside syrup to keep my stores. We didn’t certify that organic. We told all the stores we couldn’t put that little green sticker on it. We would bottle it and supply them, and we were well enough established that we were locally produced not certified organic. Quality and reputation then led. I just didn’t want to pay for the (organic) inspection anymore, $300-400, so we gave that up and it didn’t make a bit of difference in the end.”

Stu said Minnesota has seen huge growth in collecting sap as a hobby over the last few years.

“Just people tapping five, 10, 15, 20 trees is just phenomenal. I couldn’t begin to estimate how many there are, especially in this area, a lot of maples, a lot of rural parcels,” he said.

New hobbyists among the Minnesota maple trees who use sound business practices may be able to turn their operations into agribusinesses like Camp Aquila Pure Maple Syrup as the Petersons have done. Their syrup has been honored in award competitions from the local level to the international level. That includes taking first place in the Light Amber category of the North American Maple Council.

“There’s something about the trees in Minnesota, the sugar maples, and our soils. Minnesota producers do very well in international competition,” Stu said.

The International Maple Conference returns to the region this year when the Wisconsin Maple Syrup Producers Association hosts October 26-29, 2022 in LaCrosse, Wis. https://wismaple.org/2022

The Petersons look forward to returning with their fellow Minnesota Maple Syrup Producers’ Association members to the international event.

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Meyers Tractor Salvage of South Dakota rides market cycles in salvage parts and scrap

Mikkel Pates — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 10:30:00 GMT

ABERDEEN, South Dakota — The Meyers family of Aberdeen has grown to be one of the upper Midwest’s major recyclers of agricultural tractor and combines, and other equipment. Their parts business is especially important in times of supply disruptions.

Paul R. Meyers, 68, and his wife, Wendy, are co-owners of Meyers Tractor Salvage LLC, based five miles north of Aberdeen, in north central South Dakota. Paul started the business in 1973. Today, they are partners with two sons — James, 42, and Dave, 36, — and have about 20 employees.

Meyer Tractor Salvage started on Paul’s parents’ farmstead, which today is the center of a salvage yard that encompasses more than 100 acres. At the middle is an office, a disassembly shop and three large parts warehouses. The family owns some of the farmsteads around, which makes for better neighbor relations.

To the untrained eye, the salvage yard with its aging iron can seem chaotic, but it’s actually very organized: rows of tires and cabs, carcasses of red, green, blue and yellow machines, each grouped with their own ilk and era.

The Meyers crews remove certain parts from farm tractors and combines. Excess steel and other metals go into position to be sent into scrap metal markets. The company sells up to 15,000 tons of scrap iron a year. About 30% goes out on trucks, and 70% goes through their separate rail-loading spur facility about eight miles away. The scrap can be sent to smelters, mills and foundries nationwide.

The salvage yard buzzes all day. Employees whiz by on four-wheelers, completing parts or scrap iron tasks. Some are operating large wheeled shears, tearing implements apart with giant shears or with sophisticated materials handlers, placing scrap into semi-trailers.

Backwards factory

“We’re just a backwards factory,” Paul Meyers said, in oft-repeated summary of the process. “Instead of putting it together piece by piece, we take it apart piece by piece.

They’re not afraid of work.

Paul was the youngest of five children on a farm operated by his parents, Ivan and Cecelia Meyers. Both sides of the family came to the area to farm in the early 1900s.

Paul grew up helping on his dad’s farm and working for his older brother, George, who in 1962 started a separate business — Meyers Auto, an auto parts recycling business. (George died in October 2021. His son, LaVern, continues to run the business.)

In 1970, Paul graduated from high school. He joined his father’s farm and cattle operation. In 1973, Paul started buying some farm machinery to recycle. In 1974, Paul married Wendy, who became the company’s “master bookkeeper,” he said. By the early 1980s, they pivoted to more combines and hay machinery. Working six to seven days a week, Paul eventually rented out the farmland and focused on the salvage business.

Paul doesn’t know for sure, but he guesses that maybe perhaps half of the farmers in the region may have sourced parts with his company or sold him scrap.

Some customers drive hundreds of miles for a part. The Meyers’ parts go nationwide — occasionally worldwide. The salvage yard grounds are visited several times a day by FedEx, UPS and and truck freight carriers.

Worldwide parts

Paul said his father, Ivan, had said there are three types of farm customers. There’s “the little guy” who gets by cheaply and needs used parts. There’s the “middle guy” who may buy equipment up to ten years old. Then there are the larger operators, many of whom work in the “brand new” equipment.

“The last few years, the middle guy has kind of shrunk out — he’s hard to find,” Paul said. ”The little guy is still there, and the big guy is still there.”

Meyer Tractor Salvage tends to purchase five- to ten-year-old machines, but even those up to 30 years.

“The new stuff we buy, it may sit here for 10 or 15 years (before it sells) … because either it hasn’t worn down yet, or people using that quality of machinery are using brand new yet,” Paul said. Some equipment has a two- or three-year warranty. It may sell for “a long time,” or it may not sell for three to five years after they get it. He likens it to purchasing a certificate-of-deposit in a bank.

Today to the 1920s

Meyers Tractor Salvage advertises to sell “new” after-market and “used” parts for all brands and types of farm machinery — tractors, combines, silage choppers, sickle mowers, balers, swathers and planting equipment, among them. Their warehouses are filled with rows and rows of crankshafts, reconditioned radiators, complete engines, complete cabs, swathers and combine headers, and others. They have starters, generators — new and rebuilt. Rims and tires. They sell some antique tractor parts, dating to the 1920s.

The company recycles as many parts as possible, to go back to machines still in the field.

The rest goes to be processed for making into new products. Some other yards take agricultural machines and recycle it for the metals, but not the parts.

The task has changed over the years.

In the late 1970s, Meyers Tractor Salvage would “cut up” (disassemble and put away parts for) six tractors in a day. Today, they do about two, because of the size of the equipment and because the equipment is more complicated.

There is demand for some parts that are not economical. For example there’s a worldwide market for “doorknobs and cables” but it doesn’t work, financially.

“You can’t put that $25 an hour employee out to work (removing) a $10 part,” Paul said. ”It would be nice to do, but you can’t do it.”

Paul said there’s also a trend toward fire-damaged machines.

A decade ago, the government started requiring combines to run with catalytic converters to reduce air pollution. But the converters become “horribly hot” if there is any chaff or dust, and that leads to more fires.

Scrappy scrap

About three-quarters of the Meyers’ tonnage won’t have value as parts and will go into the scrap market.

The scrap metal market had been poor for the past six years. Everybody was “sold down” in inventory. The value went to almost nothing in 2009, during the financial crisis, but now has recovered to record all-time highs. It accounts for about 20% to 30% of the company’s revenue.

On one afternoon in late March, David Meyers used an orange “mobile shear” that he manipulated like a toy, tearing apart a John Deere 6600 combine carcass — a machine from the 1970s that has been stripped of parts. The shear weighs about 60,000 pounds and the shearing head can cut off a 3-inch thick solid bar of steel to process it for recycling, David said.

The “dirty” parts will go to a shredder to get separated. The “clean” parts will go straight to a steel mill. They have a baler for crushing dirty scrap, cars and appliances into bale-like bundles.

Some parts, like cast-iron pulleys that are broken, will go to a foundry for making things like new brake rotors and possibly engine blocks or gear box housings. Other parts will be cut into three-foot pieces to go off to a steel mill to make into cast iron, or products like fence posts or angle iron and rebar.

Some of the steel being recycled is from grain bins. A large number of the corrugated bin parts from an area elevator stood in a kind of wall, waiting to be shipped to a buyer.

In 2013, the Meyers family put more than $2 million into a machine shop and a scrap rail loading in a siding on the BNSF line, about four miles east of Aberdeen. They acquired some of the equipment assets from a machine shop in Aberdeen that was closing.

Employees in the “clean” machine shop do things like rebuild cylinder heads, blocks and crankshafts that Meyers will sell. They also do custom machine work.

The long game

Paul has concerns about the future, including the workforce and what he perceives as a decline of available workers and work ethic. He also worries about “just-in-time” supply chain economics that are good for corporations when things go smoothly, but leave the economy vulnerable in market shocks and trade disruptions.

But he and his sons generally are optimistic about the future for their business and for their family.

“There’s always going to be machines,” David said. “Machines always get wrecked, they’re always going to get broken. As long as the world still needs food, people are going to need equipment to grow it, spray it, harvest it, till it. As long as they keep breaking things, we’ll supply the parts that we can.”

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