As drought deepens, southwestern Minnesota farmer fears the long-term toll

Parts of the region received some much-needed rain over the last 48 hours, but not everyone was hit by these early summer soakers.

In far southwestern Minnesota, in Rock County, Wednesday’s storms missed cattle rancher and farmer Peter Bakken’s land altogether, and he told Morning Edition the lingering drought has him worried about the health of his crops and cows.

“We’re right at a critical spot where we need to have timely rains,” Bakken said. “We don’t have any recharge in the ground, so my big concern at the moment is I’m a beef farmer and we’re trying to get cows on grass and the grass is not growing.”

Bakken also grows corn, soybeans and alfalfa. His first alfalfa crop cutting was “phenomenal, so we at least have some optimism that we’ve got some hay to feed those cows if we have to bring them home from pasture, but as I said, it’s the long-term ramifications of drought that you know the second crop might be less, or not at all.”

And it goes beyond one crop in one year. Subsequent years of drought have a snowball effect on Bakken’s bottom line.

“The impacts of dry weather are just exponential as we go down on the months along, so to not have a reserve, to not get something immediately, certainly impacts long-term production on our farm,” he said.

The U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday shows northwestern Rock and southwestern Pipestone counties entered extreme drought; extreme drought hasn’t been present in Minnesotan since March 2024, according to meteorologist Sven Sundgaard. More than 75 percent of the state is at least abnormally dry.

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