Drought-ravaged ranchers look east for CRP hay
From left: Aaron Reddish, Paul Sproule and Justin Mead examine hay fields in rural Grand Forks county on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. Mead, a rancher from Grassy Butte, N.D., along with his friend Aaron Reddish, are in the area to swath hay on CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) land for Seven Cross Ranch. Nick Nelson/Agweek
GRAND FORKS — Justin Mead traveled across the state to make hay.
The 370-mile trip from his ranch in Grassy Butte, N.D., to a temporary home in Grand Forks, N.D., took him from a brown-and-stunted world to a lushly green one.
“It’s different, that’s for sure,” Mead said with a smile as he stood in a field enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program that he and Aaron Reddish, his hired man and longtime friend, were haying.
Mead is one of many western North Dakota ranchers who are haying, or trying to hay, CRP land in Grand Forks County. The northeast North Dakota county — Grand Forks is its dominant city — has avoided the drought ravaging much of the state, including the Grassy Butte area. So, Mead and other ranchers hope to get enough CRP hay here to offset their meager hay crop back home.
CRP is a voluntary federal program that pays landowners to take environmentally sensitive land out of production and plant grass and other vegetation on it. Because of the drought, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is allowing emergency haying and grazing on CRP land in North Dakota, Montana and South Dakota.
Of the roughly 23.5 million CRP acres nationwide, North Dakota accounts for about 1.5 million acres and Grand Forks County about 74,000 acres. Though most of Grand Forks County is in the fertile Red River Valley, some of the county’s farmland isn’t well-suited to crops and has been in the CRP for years.
It’s unclear how many CRP acres in Grand Forks County will be hayed, in part because not all types of CRP are open to haying. And some CRP land won’t be hayed because weeds limit the value of hay from it, adding more uncertainty. Uncooperative weather in August also would work against haying.
Paul Sproule, a Grand Forks farmer who’s connecting western North Dakota ranchers with Grand Forks-area landowners, said he’s already visited with more than 20 landowners.
“There’s so much need for this. And it’s a chance for those of us fortunate to have moisture this year help some of the people who don’t,” he says.
Sproule noted that Grand Forks received major, widespread support after the community suffered horrible spring flooding in 1997.
Social media can connect CRP landowners and ranchers who need hay, he says.
The North Dakota Department of Agriculture hotline might be helpful, too: 701-425-8454.
Big job ahead
Jason Kusmenko, of Kusmenko Kustom Farming in Zap, N.D.
Western North Dakota ranchers will cut and bale CRP hay, then move the bales close to the road, where they will be loaded on trucks and taken home.
Jason Kusmenko of Kusmenko Kustom Farming of Zap, N.D., is among the western North Dakota agriculturalists haying in Grand Forks County. He and his 10-person crew already are cutting and baling and hope to begin trucking hay home before this article is published.
Transporting the hay home — economically and in full compliance with road restrictions — will be a challenge, but one he’s confident of meeting, Kusmenko said.
When he visited with Agweek on Aug. 1, he was fine-tuning details. But his plan was to use 110-foot-long hay trucks, each carrying roughly 50 big bales.
He shrugged when asked about the time and effort required to make the bales and bring them home.
“We need the hay,” Kusmenko said.
Tough it out
The drought is bad enough, but Mead’s Seven Cross Ranch, which has 400 cow-calf pairs, was hurt by a massive wildfire in July
, as well. He’s determined to tough it out, though.
“I’m a fourth-generation rancher, and we didn’t get to the fourth generation by selling cows,” he said.
So, he and Reddish are living in a camper in Grand Forks and hoping to make enough hay for Seven Cross Ranch. They want to make hay for hard-pressed neighbors at home, too.
“We’ll be here as long as there’s hay to get, and we hope that will be quite a while,” Mead said.
He paused for a second and then added, “The people letting us hay their land — we can’t thank them enough. It means so much.”
Article by: Jonathan Knutson / Agweek Staff Writer
