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Soybean farmer Dean Tofteland smiles at the gift of sudden rainfall on his crops in Luverne, Minn.
Covering the news occasionally produces unexpected insights, as happened when a recent assignment to document the impact of a corporate meltdown turned into a lesson on the raw realities of farming and the weather, both drought and rain.
It was mid-afternoon on a Thursday in the waning days of summer, and we were in the town of Luverne (pop. 4,745), in the southwestern corner of Minnesota.
Luverne is close to the borders of two states -- Iowa to the south and South Dakota to the west -- and about 30 miles from the city of Sioux Falls.
NBC News' senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers, our camera crew and I had traveled there to interview Dean Tofteland, a farmer of corn and soybeans who lost access to his own money when a financial firm collapsed last year. He had parked his money in a customer account, to use as a protection against fluctuations in crop prices.
Tofteland testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee about his loss and what what it meant for his farm business, and whom he thinks should be held accountable. (All that is part of a story we intend to report for NBC Nightly News in the coming weeks.)
But on that afternoon at Tofteland's farm, something else happened: another story about the realities of farming and the weather, of drought and rain.
According to a report by the U.S. Drought Monitor released late last month, drought covers 62.9 percent of the lower 48 states. It is centered on the lower Midwestern region.
'The garden spot of Minnesota'
As I drove west across the middle of the state, from the airport in Minneapolis to Luverne on Route 212, I passed through low hills covered with corn crops. While many of the nation's farms are grappling with drought, most of the corn plants here appeared lush and green, with only isolated dried-out brown spots near the base of some stalks.
When Tofteland called me on my cellphone to gauge my progress into town, I mentioned that to him.
"You're driving through the garden spot of Minnesota," he said. "It's probably quite beautiful. They've had a fair amount of rain up there."
NBCNews.com special: Drought of 2012
Tofteland told me it was a different story on the farms in the southern part of the state, where the drought had taken a toll.
The rolling fields of corn continued throughout most of my drive. But the closer I got to Luverne, the more brown spots I saw amid the stalks.
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Drought conditions plague much of the United States after a summer of scorching temperatures and a lack of rain. The dryness is affecting America's farmland, threatening crops like soybean and corn.
It was a fairly hot and humid day, so we had decided to do Tofteland’s main interview indoors, at his home, and save the outdoor shooting on his farm for later in the afternoon, when the sun and temperature were both lower (lower sun provides better light for shooting outdoor video).
Weather takes a turn
As we prepared to leave Tofteland's house at around 5 p.m. we noticed that the sky -- which had been blue and clear all day, with a hot sun -- was now turning slightly gray, with small rain clouds. A check of a mobile weather app with radar showed only a very small blob of rain and possible lightning in the area, surrounded by clear skies.
We set out for Tofteland's farm, about 5 miles south of Luverne, where we began shooting video of the farmer inspecting his corn crops -- cap on head, glasses, striped short-sleeved shirt, jeans.
As he pulled down the sides of a few ears of corn for us, revealing the cobs underneath, it started to rain.
It was now after 6 p.m., and the rain clouds seemed to have amassed directly above Tofteland's property. They were darker gray than before, but we could still see clear sky off to the west, and the sun in its midst. We checked the weather app again. The radar showed the storm blob bigger than before, but still nothing else incoming.
We looked up at the clouds to try to discern their direction. It was difficult to tell. One moment, they appeared to be moving north and east, the next the opposite.
As it began to rain steadily, Lisa set up office in our rental vehicle to work on the "standup" part of her script -- the portion where the correspondent appears on camera in the story.
We chose to believe that it would be a passing storm. We could still see the sun right behind the edge of the clouds.
We decided to shoot some other indoor video we needed while we waited for it to clear up -- shots of Tofteland looking through financial account statements.
Our crew, Mark Falstad and Heidi Hesse, out of Minneapolis, set up their gear in Tofteland's farm garage, where he had a workbench and various tools and farm implements.
After we finished shooting Tofteland’s documents, we turned our attention back outside. The clouds appeared to have darkened, and expanded. I looked up at one of the edges, and could see cloud parts forming outward, and outward, into masses that were not there moments before.
"This thing looks like it's really exploding," Tofteland said.
The rain began coming hard, in sheets. Ominous dark gray now dominated the sky, punctuated by frequent lightning flashes and thunder.
NBC News
Heavy rain falls on Dean Tofteland's crops in Luverne, Minn.
The sun and those tantalizing clear skies were still visible to the west, but as a sliver becoming smaller and smaller.
Then Tofteland learned that the National Weather Service had just issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the immediate area -- pretty much for the exact latitude and longitude of his farm.
Forced to sell cattle during drought, dairy farmers 'just keep praying' for rain
We had been waiting out the weather for more than an hour, and it was almost 7:30. Lisa and I were planning to drive the 3 1/2- hours back to Minneapolis that night, ahead of our flights back to Washington the next morning. We both decided to stick it out, hoping the storm would pass and we could still get the rest of our shooting done before sunset.
But it was clear to Tofteland that the storm was blowing our plans around like scattered thistles.
He felt a need to apologize for the inconvenience.
"Hey, at least it's good for your crops," we said, meaning it.
As we stood waiting inside Tofteland's garage, the rainfall ratcheted up further, first becoming torrential, then epically torrential. The winds picked up and began whipping the trees along the edges of the crops. The gray clouds had darkened further, and eventually spread to every corner of the visible sky. It clearly was not going anywhere.
"Boy -- that’s a slow-moving storm," Tofteland observed.
The water was now coming down so fast that it was far exceeding the ability of the ground to absorb it. The dirt -- now mud -- of the open space in front of the concrete garage apron began developing large puddles and streams. It had become the kind of rain that makes you wonder about rainfall totals, and possible records.
Like a boy at Christmas
That is when we started to pay close attention to Tofteland, as we realized what we were actually observing.
He was staring out the garage window, at all that rain. His eyes wide with wonder. A smile was spreading across his face. He looked like a boy confronting stacks of presents under the tree on Christmas Day.
We were witnessing a farmer getting a sudden and unexpected ride out of a serious dry spell.
"We haven't had a storm like this in a long time," he said quietly. "This is the first one we've had all year."
"This," he said, "is a million-dollar rain."
NBC News
Buildings on Dean Tofteland's farm in Luverne, Minn., get pummeled by a late-summer downpour.
Just like that. One good, soaking rain could be a significant revenue boost for local farmers.
Tofteland explained his accounting, why and how the rainfall would boost his and other farmers' harvest of soybeans. The soybeans had been dry all summer, he said, but they can adapt to additional moisture late in the season.
A rain such as this one, he estimated, could add two bushels of harvestable soybeans to each acre of crop. Over his 1,200 acres, that would add up to 2,400 extra bushels. At $15 per bushel, that would mean a $36,000 bonus for his farm alone. By his reckoning, those two extra bushels per acre could add up to $1 million for all the local farmers in the region's 12 townships.
No wonder he was smiling. But his delight -- which was as much for his fellow farmers as for himself -- did not last long.
Drought sends Mississippi into 'uncharted territory'
A few minutes later, something else began falling from the sky: small, white pellets of hail, which bounced as they hit the ground.
I picked up one that had fallen close to the door: it was smooth, gray-white and about the size of a penny.
The severe drought ruining crops around much of the United States has spared the Pacific Northwest. Farmers in Washington are enjoying high crop yields and high prices.
Just as suddenly as the rain had leaped in volume, so did the hail. Soon, the visible ground was covered with bouncing white pellets. And they were increasing in size.
Tofteland suddenly bolted toward a side door inside the garage, leading to an adjoining machine shed.
"Listen to this," he said. "When the hail falls like that, listen to what it sounds like in here."
The roof of the shed was metal, and what might have been hundreds or even thousands of hailstones were striking it, hard.
The sound was deafening. We had to cover our ears after a few seconds.
Drought expected to take toll at checkout
For Lisa, Mark, Heidi and I, the storm and its hail was a bit of a minor adventure, a natural event, interesting for spectators. But for Tofteland, weather events like this one held his livelihood and those of all farmers like him in their grip.
His face had darkened now. His brow was furrowed, his eyes intense, his mouth twisted into the beginnings of a scowl.
As the drought continues, ranchers worry for the future especially now that the total number of cattle in the U.S. is already the smallest in 60 years. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
From good to bad
While the rainfall had been good for the crops, the hail was clearly not.
"It's bad for the soybeans," he said. "Hail like this can bruise the stems and cause the pods to fall off the plants."
The best-case scenario? The hail could subtract two bushels of soybeans per acre. It could completely erase his bonus from the rain, and those of all the other farmers.
The worst-case scenario? The hail could devastate all their soybean plants.
"It could wipe out the entire crop," Tofteland said.
Somewhere in between could be a loss for Tofteland of tens of thousands of dollars.
One minute Tofteland was up, the next he was break-even, or perhaps way down.
What Mother Nature suddenly giveth, she just as suddenly could taketh away.
Americans tell their story of #Drought2012
Tofteland continued gazing out at his fields, eyes squinting into the distance. He was like every farmer who had ever lived -- looking up at the sky, wondering whether the weather would bestow benefits or costs.
Although the National Weather Service announced that its severe thunderstorm warning would end by 7:45, this storm continued to develop past that prediction. Its clouds churned in multiple directions, and small tendrils of clouds appeared to reach down toward the ground.
The mobile weather app's radar showed its dramatic growth, roughly centered on Tofteland’s property.
The farmer drove up the road to figure out the storm's scope, and reported back that, just a mile away, it wasn't even raining and the sky was blue.
It seemed as if this storm was his farm's own personal supercell.
The weather app showed something else: a smaller protruding part on one side of the storm.
In drought-stricken Wisconsin, farmers helping farmers
"That's bad," Tofteland said. When you see something like that, he told us, tornadoes could form.
Right about then, we realized that the thunderclaps had begun to blend together into one long continuous rumble -- not unlike the sound of a freight train.
We decided to decamp.
As we drove away, the storm still towered in the sky, a fearsome and threatening giant, its destructive potential on full display, backlit by the sun setting below the horizon.
Barely an hour later, it was gone.
When we got to a hotel in Sioux Falls, the local TV station's weather report announced its sudden formation and demise in the same breath. The full sweep of radar imagery was the visual history of its instant growth and dissipation.
When we met up with Tofteland at 6:45 the following morning to finish the shooting, the sky was clear, and the sun's early morning light carried that extra beauty that seems to come only after a huge storm has passed.
Emergency well drilling brings relief to farmers stricken by drought
The storm had formed out of nowhere and dissolved back into nowhere. But its impact was significant and permanent.
The storm's rainfall totaled between 2 and 4 inches in two hours -- a potential windfall for Tofteland’s soybean crop, possibly generating tens of thousands of dollars in extra soybeans and revenue.
The largest hail was quarter-sized and had struck his plants -- a potential loss of tens of thousands of dollars in lost soybeans and revenue.
Some of the soybean stems had bent under the onslaught of hail, and their plants were still lying flat, Tofteland reported two weeks later. Others had bounced back and were upright again. He still does not know how much of his soybean crop was permanently damaged or how many soybeans were lost.
In the end, it may have been a million-dollar rain.
But Tofteland and his fellow farmers will not know until after the harvest which side of the ledger that sudden storm will impact more, whether it will lead to a gain, a loss, or neither. And, like their counterparts across the centuries of human agriculture, they are still dependent on the vagaries of the weather from moment to moment.
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Leave a Comment:
What an interesting story - great perspective - economic and human interest! Kudos to the report for being able to roll with the punches and switch gears!
What I find interesting, here you have a farmer that cares very much about farming.
What I want to know is the farmers that take the money from the federal government, who are given money for NOT farming anything. Where the federal government to a farmer and told NOT to farm. I want to know whose offering money to farmers to not farm. And I want to know which farmers are taking the money.
There's the Conservation Reserve Program that takes marginal land out of production. More of that is being plowed as crop prices have increased and drought has meant decreased hay production. About 80% of the money in the farm bill goes to food stamps. About 11% go into the "farm subsidies" that include conservation programs (including wetland and grassland preservation), price supports, and crop insurance.
All that info should be available at your local farm service agency or county auditor's office.
The photographer captured the essence of the American farmer at his best. That photo naturally melts my heart. God bless that farmer, and I hope he prevails.
Jake-1394704?:
The 'School Lunch Program' is also a portion of the Farm Bill.
A strong agriculture industry is a National Security issue. Try living without food and water.
Jake-
It's not true that 80% of the Farm Bill money goes to food stmps . That's ridiculous.
No chickenlittle, the sky is not falling.
Rule of thumb, farmers everywhere expect and plan for one crop failure every seven years.
Mr. Tofteland's line-of-credit at the bank will keep him in business, rain or shine. Not to worry.
There is still a whole lot of tofu remaining in that bean field for Asia. Cheer up guys and gals.
What happens if theor crop fails back to back on the 13th and 14th years? Eek!
as a lot of little banks that played with the big boys in the housing boom of the "naughties" have found out, lines of credit can mestasize on you and cancer out the whole bank. a number of farmers, purely based on where they happen to live and work, have lost their LOCs in the past several years.
Shucks, now they will have to actually go back to work on their farm instead of sitting in the coffee shop all day and collecting farm subsidies from the government.
why, son, I 'spect you never had to scrape your shoes in your life, now ain't that right?
yep sor nuff have to work/ I would love to see you spend a summer on the farm not doing the work
It is a good feeling at the end of the day to be so tired you can't raise your arms above your shoulders...farm work is my life and I'm proud of it. Trust me, Cameron Ford, you will never sleep better...the rewards of a hard days work cannot be expressed in words..you should try it sometimes. Farmers will always prevail..they are a tough and resilient lot..................
and yet we continue to shower billions a year on farmers...and yes Jake that includes the money spent on food stamps which after all is just another form of subsidiy for farmers and producers...
Yes, everyone knows that the $200 each poor person gets to buy food is making farmers rich off government money.
I despise how some people want to take food out of the mouths of otherwise starving children, while at the same time wanting to give additional tax breaks to oil companies, millionaires and billionaires.
dirp:
Just how and why are USA children starving?
Neil Young lays it down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEoLsOAdoDc
Between federal subsidies and private insurance paying out more than the ruined crop would have fetched, it's kind of hard for me to feel sorry for farmers when the weather doesn't cooperate. The ones who really suffer are all the folks buying groceries.
rkaralius:
Only a few crops have any subsidies, and not all farmers apply for or receive them. The insurance polices often do not bring in the prices the producer would receive via contract and/or the open market.
If you do not like the retail prices at the stores, go grow your own.
It's idiotic comments like rkaralius that show who has or hasn't lived on a farm/ranch. Agriculture is one of the hardest jobs ever and, yes, depends on the whims of nature for success or failure. When your crops ripen, you have a very short window of time to harvest or all is lost, if it rains and damages the fruit/vegetable, all is lost, not enough rain, all is lost, no one to harvest? Again, loss. Getting up at 4:00 a.m. going to bed when it is too dark to work, 7 days a week during planting and again at harvest. Most Americans don't appreciate a farmer's hard work.
Obviously YOU have never lived in or paid attention to the farmers who gather in small town restaurants to have breakfast or a coffee break and discuss what is happening on their farms. Farming is, in my mind, the biggest gamble that any farmer makes!
My parents started buying a farm back in the mid 1950's and I can remember some times when we had
not had rain for sometime, that when it did finally rain, my 2 younger sisters and I would be out dancing in the rain, we were so happy to know we were getting rain.
If you have never spent any amount of time on even a small farm, you MIGHT FINALLY understand what every farmer risks each year. And then there is the farm land my parents started purchasing in the mid 1950's ---- they got it cheap, but my father was extremely intelligent as well as a very good designer. The
original parcel which they bought had not been farmed for some time --- or if it had, it was NOT very productive. My father decided that the fastest and cheapest way to clear fields in certain areas, was to put up an electric fence, buy a small herd of goats and let them clear the land parcel by parcel. Also that farm had been, for many years, known as the goose farm because portions of it flooded. So what did that forward thinker do, he built dikes and levees so that the flooding did not happen. He also, with the
help of a local blacksmith, designed and built a dreger so that my dad could take that down several miles and clear the weeds and other things that grew so fast during a raining year. And he also risk his own life
each time he went out to clear those fast flowing ditches.
So the next time you want to complain about the farmers sitting around the local coffee shop, you might want to remember how hard they worked to the food to your table!!!!
God bless the farmers. They risk everything every year. The farmers I have known love the land, work hard and don't get handouts. If the farmers take out private crop insurance, why is that anybody's problem?
I don't understand the hostility toward U S farmers.
Thank you, Debbie. I grew up on a farm in Minnesota. Despite what some of these idiots here think, farmers do NOT have an easy life. We never collected a check from the government and usually, my dad had to pay a lot of taxes every year TO the government. So does my brother who took over the family farm.
How many of you talking about subsidies, etc, have ever put in a day's work on a farm? I bet none of you. Yet you all expect there to be groceries on the shelves at Whole Foods or where ever you buy your milk and bread. I challenge all of you to go spend a summer on a dairy or hog farm and learn where your food comes from.
I've been living in a farming community for the last 10 years and Tom is absolutely right. Farmers and ranchers work hard dawn to dusk on their farms, far harder than those working in office jobs. It entails manual labor and long hours, with no guarantee of a paycheck. All of you complaining about farm subsidies should be thankful to U.S. farmers - or maybe you'd rather have your beef, fruits and vegetables imported from other countries? I would hope not. I too, don't know one farmer or rancher here who takes farm subsidies.
No, Smlfry2, I want to get my fruits and veggies and meat and eggs and milk at a local farm the way that we should all be able to. I want to give my money to a small local farmer who does not fill my beef and chicken full of antibiotics and growth hormones. There are so many things wrong with the way that we understand farming in this country; subsidies are just the beginning. Even if a farmer does not accept subsidies, that does not mean that he or she is some kind of American hero.
Tom, I grew up in a rural area. I've barned tobacco, culled corn, picked bell peppers. So you lose your bet. I never said it wasn't hard work - it is. But farmers nowadays have a lot more security than they used to, if they choose to avail themselves of it. My point is that a bad weather season isn't necessarily a financial disaster for farmers, but it DOES translate to higher prices for consumers. It always comes back to consumers - just like the price of gas during hurricane season.
How much hay do you think Obama has baled. How much corn has he shelled. How many row of beans has he walked. He wouldn't last 5 minutes on a farm...
Do you think Romney has ever been on a farm? I'd put my money on the Prez.
Romney on a farm? Wouldn't he mess up his dew? Don't know if Obama has been on a farm, but he would sure give it a try.
I doubt either of these guys would last very long in my work-boots, but my money would be on Obama to last the longest.
Only thing Obama might raise is POT
Chuck W:
Yes he has. He has been on my farms and orchards several times since 1999. Does really matter? No, it does NOT.
What does your totally nonsensical rant have to do with anything? Get a life!
How they can make gambling illegal while we still farm is beyond me. I don't think anyone should stop farming, I'm just saying that it's the ultimate gamble every year--hell, every season--and things like slot machines and backroom poker is tiny potatoes compared to it. And organic farmers have it even tougher because they can't rely on fast-acting insecticides or fertilizers. Anyone who's never tried to grow something and failed at it should say nothing about this article.
Lots of retired farmers in the casino's in Minnesota. I guess it gets in their blood. No need to go to Vegas if you're a farmer, they gamble millions in a 4 month long Texas Hold 'em tournament every year.
I grew up in the Yakima Valley and never new a poor farmer. The farmers diversified their crops and one was always a money maker. You will never get them to admit this fact.
Moretimer:
What fact supports your claim? There has many agriculture producer in Central Washington that have failed each year. The past three (3) years have been good to some crops (field corn and wheat), but look over the last ten years for a better picture. The people that make the big money in the agriculture industry are the suppliers and the financiers.
96% of all USA agriculture food producers are family owned.
So why should a farmer be poor nimrod? They work damn hard for the money they earn.
It is extremely clear from the posts here, that most of the posts are by those who have never spent much time around farming. We were raised around farming, but it was not our father's trade ... nonetheless, anyone who thinks the average farmer sits around Starbucks taking government checks has a very great deal to learn ...a very, very great deal ...
It takes b**** of brass to risk the farm every day on the whims of nature ... these are braver folk than we ...
This seems to me to be just as risky as the stock market. Do farmers get tax exempt status just as Romney does for investing his money? This idea that I'm putting my money at risk in the stock market needs to change! Romney isn't taking any more of a risk than the rest of us. The one thing he is doing different is he's keeping his winnings overseas where he doesn't have to pay tax on them. Someone find a law him and the rest of his Bain friends are breaking and put and end to free money!
Yep him and pelosi should pay far more then what they do.
Confussed-1578043:
W M Romney is NOT exempt from federal taxes nor is any other person earning capital gains income. All investments are at risk of 100% lost. Congress past the tax code NOT W M Romney.
W M Romney paid $3,213,051 in federal income tax for Y2011 - that is an effective tax rate of 15.4%. B H Obama paid $150,123 - that is an effective tax rate of 19.0%. The average USA federal taxpayer paid $1,026 - that is an effective tax rate of 2.3%. I think W M Romney paid more than his "fair share".
I grew up on a farm in Kansas and worked 6 days a week 10 to 12 hours a day during the summer. Of course not during school, but we had chores to do after school. There are no labor laws on a farm, so I started around 10 years old. My dad worked every day that many hours, because along with the crops we had Holstein (milking cows) that had to be milked twice a day. What he made per hour wasn't much more than minimum wage. No time and half, or double time. Wheat harvest is late June to early July with working hours around 15 hours a day every day. Got to get the wheat ASAP, too early get docked, too late loose weight for the bushel was based on weight. No paychecks every two weeks. As far as wheat, you pay for fuel and fertilizer to grow the wheat and hope that drought, bugs, crop disease, hail storm, fire (lighting) doesn't destroy the crop before you harvest it or you lose the majority of year's salary. Only once or twice a year did we eat at a restaurant and we had two vacations while I was there, Dodge City and the Ozarks of Missouri. I got a degree in Civil Engineering and when I got my first job I couldn't believe how much I got paid for working only 5 days a week for only 8 hours a day. All that said, I wouldn't trade being raised on a farm for nothing. There are many reasons, but the primary ones for me are; 1) it teaches you to be happy with doing a good hard days work, and 2) be happy with what you have, not unhappy with what you don't have.
Kyle .. now, you were raised on a farm ... and your points are well and wisely taken.
Man, despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication and his many accomplishments, owes his existence to a 6-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.
Early in the Spring of this year, we got a good rain and then started hailing big stones. We all just planted our vegetable gardens (I live in southern Mississippi.). It was amiss that not one hailstone knocked down any of our garden, but then we had windstorms and it did do damage. Most of my veggies died from having too much water. So I understand how that is with these farmers. I was so hoping that all the Midwest States would get some beneficial rain out of Hurricane Issac.
Via proxy data we have thousands of years of temperature and rainfall data for the US. This year is not an outlier. Drought and heat happens every 70-100 years - like clockwork! Why aren't we prepared? We elect politicians, lawyers, economists, peanut heads to office. They are among the dumbest of the educated class. They never took math/statistics or multiple science courses. Any activist can convince them that up is down while the math major could prove to them that 1+1 not equal 2 and they would be baffled (the old divide by zero scam).
They don't run the farms....farmers do.
We finally see the media grow signs of a heart when it's not just Texas or California, but actually close to home where they can see the effect these droughts have. Everybody else has been dealing with it and finally it came your turn.
No, you don't grow things without rain.
bepatient:
Yes you can, it is called i-r-r-i-g-a-t-i-o-n...
Homer, are you really that dumb? Where do you think the water comes from for irrigation? Let me give you a hint. It comes from rain that replenished the wells and aquifers used for irrigation.
Drought and climate change has been in the news for decades so why aren't communities talking about it and deciding what they should do to survive. Congress is to busy agruing and doing nothing so it's up to the cities and towns in each area to take control. Why do we think the feds have to resolve our problems can't we as citizens do that?