MCLEOD COUNTY, Minn. - “Hang on,” warned Jeff Kosek as he throttled up the V12 engine in his Challenger tractor.
Hang on, indeed, as Minnesota farmers scramble to get crops in the ground after this year’s delayed spring.
“A month ago, we had about 12, 14, inches of snow on the ground,” Kosek laughs.
He can find it more amusing now. Unlike some farmers, Kosek has finished his corn planting and, on Friday, prepared another field to plant beans.
The past couple weeks have been a rush.
“You kind of want to enjoy your planting season,” said Curt Burns, a farmer and crop consultant. “This year you just kind of got to, you know, you put in 18 to 20 hour days just to try to get the crop in as quick as you could.”
Farmers have packed so many hours of planting in a small window, a bottleneck has developed getting fertilizer to farmers.
This week Governor Dayton signed an emergency executive order, easing work hour restrictions to keep fertilizer truck drivers on the road.
Late planting can affect yields, which hits farmers in their pocketbooks.
Farm incomes are already strained by low commodity prices, but this planting season has brought a new wrinkle: the prospect of a trade war with China – a major importer of U.S. farm products.
“Farming is that way,” Kosek says. “There’s a lot of things we don’t have control of, markets, weather, politics.
Markets, weather and politics: this spring, farmers find themselves planted at the convergence of all three.