Farmers have one eye on State Fair escape, one on Minnesota's extreme drought

The fair gods bestowed cooler temperatures and comfortable crowds on early birds walking the midway Thursday morning, but standing in the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation barn, Lyon County organic crop farmer Carolyn Olson scrolled nervously through her smartphone, staring at a drought map.

She had harvested her small grain already, but her corn and soybeans are wilting. It's the third summer of drought, and the two inches of rain she'd received on her farm in early August have long since evaporated.

"This is worse," she said. "They had gotten rain, so there was no drought here. And now, they're back in it."

The nation's drought monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln released its latest edition Thursday, showing fully 10% of Minnesota in extreme drought. That's up from less than 2% a week ago. To put that in perspective, parts of southwestern Minnesota have seen half the normal amount of rain.

But the worst is farther north and east. A red band runs from Hubbard County, south of the Mississippi River headwaters, all the way to Lake Superior, crossing large swaths of pasture and grazing grounds for cattle.

In southeastern Minnesota, particularly in the bluff country around Lanesboro and up to the row crops outside Rochester, drought has also worsened, leaving those farmers and gardeners and recreationalists with dramatically lower water at summer's end than historical levels.

Forecasts for the weekend show the state hitting close to 100 degrees.

The dramatic dry and hot conditions of 2023 aren't the only story pulling on the minds of farmers and farm families at the Great Minnesota Get-Together. Decades-low commodity prices in pork and dairy — as well as stubbornly high inputs costs on diesel fuel, labor and fertilizer — can weigh like yokes upon producers accompanying children to 4-H competitions.

On Thursday morning under the massive concrete arch spanning the Cattle Barn and the Lee & Rose Warner Coliseum, Tony Kohls watched as his wife and daughter held firm halters on prize dairy cattle — some of the brown Swiss variety, with their big eyes and even bigger ears — moments from the open class champion announcement.

"Everything's more expensive," said Tony, who milks 300 cows outside Arlington, Minn., for "garbage" milk prices. "It's not sustainable for anybody, no matter if you're milking 5,000 or 20,000. It's actually hurting them more."

As of a week ago, the September price for fluid milk was $18.90, almost $5 a hundredweight lower than a year earlier. But they've steadily improved since July, as has the price on cheese.

On Monday, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, the nation's top farm official, toured the state fair. During a morning roundtable at The Good Acre, a local food hub, Eunice Biel, a dairy farmer from Harmony, mentioned milk prices flirted with what farmers were earning during the Jimmy Carter administration.

Still for many farmers, the fair is an escape from troubles on the farm. They appreciate the late-summer jaunt to the Cities. They're not combining yet. And they can meet their customers, the people who eat and drink the products they help raise.

Jill Resler, chief executive officer of Minnesota Pork, was one of the few people still with pigs in pens at the Robert A. Christensen Pavilion on Thursday morning.

"At least 50,000 people have walked through our barns," said Resler, adding she knows because her company has run out of its 50,000 pink, pig-ear hats.

She said the industry is still recovering from an early summer basement, but the May timeframe was the lowest prices she'd seen in decades.

As of late August, prices have rebounded after a summer of Americans eating barbecue, which has allowed for some breathing room.

Near the pen, Resler's daughter lifted up a purple bucket to fetch more water for her blue ribbon-winning gilt, which trotted around the pen on four stout legs. Like many farm families, there is work to do back home in Steele County.

But they wanted to hang around, if only a little longer, at the fair.