| After seven straight years of too much rain, farmer Mark
Osland is used to battling adverse weather conditions. But
Wednesday afternoon, Mother Nature pulled a weapon from her
arsenal that caught the Buxton, N.D., farmer by surprise --
hail.
"I've been farming for 17 years. I've never seen hail
like this," Osland said Thursday. Osland was one of
several Traill County farmers whose fields were in the path of
a storm that cut a five-mile swath from northeast of Hatton,
N.D., to Mayville, N.D., about 4 p.m. Wednesday.
In all, about 100,000 acres, or 20 percent, of the county's
total crop acres were damaged in the storm, said Clint Gienger,
Traill County extension agent. The degree of damage to the
crops was all over the board, but soybeans and edible beans
probably sustained the most damage from the marble-size hail,
he said.
Severity varied
Osland said the hail damaged or destroyed about 900, or 40
percent, of his total crop acres. The severity of the damage
varied, depending on the location of the fields.
For example, in one area of his farm, about half of
Osland's 240 acres of sugar beets and about 100 acres of corn
were wiped out.
In those areas, "I couldn't find any beet plants last
night," Osland said Thursday. Meanwhile, "the corn
is pretty much gone." In other areas of his farm, crops
were damaged but may eventually recover.
A few miles from Osland, the degree of hail damage to crops
also varied at Keith Anderson's farm.
For example, the hail sliced off some early seeded corn at
ground level, Anderson said. Hail also damaged his soybeans
and edible beans. In all, about 650 acres, or slightly more
than half, of the 1,150 acres Anderson farms were hit by the
hailstorm.
"It's a big share of what I farm," Anderson said.
"I don't remember ever having that much damage."
In fact, hail is such a rarity on his farm that this year
Anderson took a gamble on hail insurance.
"We're trying to cut some costs here," he said.
"We hardly ever get hail in this area, and I didn't take
it out this year."
While multi-peril crop insurance, a comprehensive policy,
will cover some of the losses, it won't provide him with the
same level of coverage that a hail insurance policy would
have. Anderson will have expenses to pay from planting,
seeding and fertilizing the crops.
"It's pretty devastating," he said.
For Osland, the hailstorm was another in a series of
weather systems that have been dumping heavy rains on his
place for the past seven years.
"This," he said, "was just the icing on the
cake." |