Which is worse for crop production, too much moisture or not enough? I’ve asked growers this question, even though it’s kind of like asking to pick your poison, or whether you want a punch to the head or a kick to the gut.

One grower had a line I hadn’t heard before: “Drought will shake you, but too much rain will break you.” But that’s a grower from the Red River Valley, where excessive moisture is more often a problem than not enough. I’m sure there are farmers who would say that a drought can wipe you out just as sure as a northern prairie monsoon can.

This year’s drought has extended from Texas into Canada. Comparisons have been made to the Dirty Thirties and to the bone-dry period of 1988-89. How this year ranks with other droughts is up for debate, depending on location and whether you caught a rain or not. I think we can all agree that it was abnormally hot and dry, so hot and dry in fact that the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D., didn’t redo its mural this year because the drought and heat reduced the availability of colored corn.

From my very limited and unscientific polling, it seems that being drought-dogged is considered a lesser evil than being waterlogged, for several reasons:

When it’s dry, you can still plant and do other field applications. But you can’t plant into mud, and delayed planting and delayed pest control can drop yield potential in a hurry.
Up to a certain point, a crop affected by drought can survive on stored soil moisture and be revived by a timely rain. Too much standing water will kill plants.
You can still get into a drought-stricken field to harvest what’s there, but not if it’s standing in water.
Muddy conditions are harder on equipment and soil structure.

“Drought will shake you, but
too much rain will break you.”

Crop quality (and market discounts) are generally better under dry conditions compared to wet conditions.
Wet conditions are more conducive to crop diseases.
Droughts tend to be more widespread, and seem to have more of a bullish effect on market prices than excessive moisture, which seem to bring nothing but market discounts.
Drought brings no (or at least fewer) mosquitoes.
Some random observations on this year’s drought in the Northern Plains, from my vantage point in the prairie press box:
As dry as it is, it can always be worse. There are relative degrees of drought. It was drier than usual in the eastern Dakotas and Minnesota, but not as dry as western North Dakota and Montana, and even areas out west were not as dry as a pocket around Highway 83 from about Bismarck to Pierre. And then there are areas of the High Plains in eastern Colorado, western Kansas and southwest Nebraska that are going on six years of drought – honestly, I don’t know how dryland producers there keep doing it, farming on nothing but blood, sweat, loans, equity and devil’s claw.
Drought is tougher on the livestock guys. Pastures and stock dams dry up, hay and forage supplies become short, feed grain becomes more expensive and nitrate poisoning becomes a concern in forage crops that accumulate toxic amounts of nitrate in dry conditions. The only option in some cases is to liquidate the herd, which for ranchers can be devastating.
Crops in a number of areas fared surprisingly well, despite the drought. A late spring snowstorm in southwest North Dakota helped buoy soil moisture, while the Red River Valley was helped by ample subsoil moisture. Wheat yields in many cases turned out better than expected, and this year’s sugarbeet harvest in the Red River Valley looks to be excellent, taking advantage of the subsoil moisture. Beans and corn will be below average and disked under in cases, but many growers were nonetheless surprised at how long the crops hung in there, a function of both better genetics and management practices, such as no-till.
Farming runs on optimism. “This is the best better-luck-next-year business in the whole world,” says longtime grower Don Streifel of Washburn, N.D., about farming. “If you lose that outlook, you might as well get out of it.”

Tracy Sayler is an ag writer based near Fargo, N.D.