Farmers wait for snow cover, but not worried about drought

While snowmobilers, skiers and ice fisherman may be unhappy with a lack of snow this winter, those who manufacture, sell and lay agricultural tile aren’t complaining. They’ve been busy.

“Without a doubt, tilers are going like crazy,” said Dan Erickson, regional representative for the Minnesota Corn Growers Association. “And they will be for quite some time.”

That’s good news for many farmers, Erickson said, as most years there is a short timespan in the spring when farmers can place tile.

“As farmers, we’d much rather tile in the fall and winter than into the spring,” he added.

The dry, warm winter has made the tiling process relatively easy. The ground isn’t frozen, and there’s little to no snow cover in many regions throughout the Midwest. Despite some dragging on dry dirt when inserting the tile, most farmers and tilers are satisfied with the conditions.

“We’ve been busy all fall,” said Bill Boe of Boe Brothers Tiling in Taopi. “Haven’t caught up yet.”

Boe’s business has been fortunate to keep getting tile from a local supplier. A tiling boom in the Red River Valley has depleted a lot of the supply, which means some area farmers have had to wait. In areas of North and South Dakota, some farmers tiled during the summer instead of planting crops. Manufacturers haven’t been able to keep up with that pace.

As a conservationist, Justin Hanson, resource specialist with the Cedar River Watershed District, has noticed all that tiling, too. Though he’s removed tile from retired farmland for wetland restorations, he’s seen a lot more tile installed than removed.

“We might be in the hay day of tiling right now,” he said.

Despite the shortage of tile in some areas, local farmers may not have waited as much as others for material. Tiling has been going steady within the region, Boe said. It’s been an aggressive business for the last few decades.

“It’s comparable,” Boe said about this year and years past. “We’ve been at it for 40-some years and we’ve never had a real slow year.”

Yet tiling in the winter has another benefit. While spring fields are often soggy and machinery compacts the soil, hard dry, winter soil makes the process easier.

“We’ve had good weather and got a lot of stuff done,” Boe said.

Many area fields already have tile in them. But Boe said there are still some fields that haven’t been tiled. Furthermore, farmers are squeezing tile lines into fields as close as 35 to 40 feet apart in some cases. Where farmers used to only put tile in soggy areas of their fields for extra drainage, they are now running close, parallel lines across more sections of fields. Boe said it’s now rare for farmers to leave tile lines spaced any farther apart than 80 feet.

Despite all the work installing lines that get rid of excess moisture, farmers could actually use some precipitation. Erickson said a good rain and freeze would help break up the soil. furthermore, farmers don’t want to be planting in to dry, powdery dirt in the spring.

Erickson doesn’t think any farmers are worrying about a drought just yet, however, as there is still plenty of time for rain.

And if there’s too much rain, at least farmers can rest easy with a little extra tile in the fields.