Crop yields are sharply lower on the Shane Sand farm south of Emerado, North Dakota. Sand said wheat production was nearly half of last year, dry bean yields were down by half or more and sugarbeet yields were 10 to 12 tons below year-ago levels. Soybeans averaged in the low 30-bushel range. Corn harvest is just beginning. “That looks really, really disappointing.” Sand points to July as the turning point. “If we could erase from about the 4th of July till the 31st of July, and basically reset or rewind from August 1 to push it back to the 4th of July,” Sand told RRFN. “August was actually a a decent month. It was warm, but it wasn’t 95 every day. We got rains here and there, nothing big, but enough to feed the crops.”
