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Minnesota farmer hopes wet 2024 happens “once in a lifetime”

It’s been an historically bad growing season for a farmer in southeastern Minnesota.

Gary Prescher grows corn and soybeans in Faribault County and says the last few months have been extremely wet.

“Hopefully a once in a lifetime event. I know if you farm a long time, like I have, we’ve had our years that we can faintly recall. But every so often we get one of these years, a really really tough situation because there’s just so much crop loss that’s occurred.”

He tells Brownfield about ten percent of the crop acres in his county were drowned out.

“Which is pretty significant. I mean there’s probably another 10 to 20 percent that was just so saturated that the corn basically was overcome by wet conditions and severely stunted.”

Prescher expects a lot of variability come harvest, saying there’s waist-high corn trying to pollinate.

Brownfield interviewed Prescher, a director for the Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council, during Farmfest in southwest Minnesota last week.