Futures and Commodity Market News

Sat Nov 21, 2009

Breaking financial news 24/7 courtesy of TradingCharts.com Inc. / TFC Commodity Charts

Nov 08, 2009 (The Montana Standard - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Mark Bausch always keeps an eye on the weather in Alaska. He's not planning a trip, but he knows that the weather in Anchorage today will likely be over his Waterloo potato farm by the end of the week.

That's not what happened, however, when a record-breaking cold front and near-zero temperatures destroyed about 15 percent of Bausch's crop last month. The weather, Bausch said, came straight from the north faster than his crew could dig.

"We got zapped," he said. "Once we saw the forecast was supposed to go terribly bad, we worked and worked -- 24 hours a day for quite a few days -- but we didn't have enough time." Justin Nicholes was in the same situation. He tends his family potato and wheat farm outside Galen, nestled beneath the snowy cap of Mount Powell.

Nicholes said that about half his tuber crop was still in the ground when the weather arrived, destroying about $125,000 worth of spuds. That brought an abrupt end to a nearly perfect growing season.

"It was a big hit," Nicholes said.

Once they freeze, the potatoes are essentially worthless as a cash crop. Nicholes said all he can do is disk them over and plant wheat on the fields next year.

"At least I'll get a little fertilizer out of them," he said.

The bizarre freeze set record low temperatures across southwest Montana for five straight days -- Oct. 9-13.

Jessica Nolte, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Missoula, couldn't explain why the cold Arctic air came earlier than usual.

"It was very anomalous," she said. "It really can't be explained with any specific event, but it shattered records by 12, 14 degrees." On Oct. 9, the high in Butte was 22 degrees, breaking the previous record high of 36. Lows at night dropped into the single digits and the temperature couldn't crack the freezing point for four days. Some of the records that fell were more than 40 years old.

Temperatures that cold for that long are a death knell for a field of potatoes, said Nina Zidack, a plant pathologist and the director of Montana State University's Seed Potato Certification Program in Bozeman.

She said that when the soil around a potato freezes, it kills the plant and, after it is harvested, the tuber will shrivel and decompose.

"Some (growers) had to take a total loss," Zidack said. "Overall about 85 percent of Montana's potatoes were harvested, but a significant amount of crop was left on the field." Art Mangels, a potato farmer outside of Dillon, said about 15 to 20 percent of his was crop damaged by the freeze, but his overall production was up.

"It was an excellent yield for us and Idaho, too, so that was depressing the market a bit," he said. "Maybe this is nature's way of evening out." Still, it made for a hectic couple of days for farmers when they saw the chill was on the way.

"We dug till midnight for a couple of nights there," he said. "But once that cold comes through, they are really hard to save." The increased yield wasn't much help for farmers like Nicholes, who were about a week away from harvesting.

He said his family has crop insurance, but how much it will pay is still unclear.

"We are right around the 50 percent mark," he said. "We're going to come out behind either way." Gary Thompson, executive director for the regional Farm Services Agency, said federal disaster relief money could be made available to some area farmers.

Programs include low-interest loans and tax benefits.

The request has been forwarded from Anaconda-Deer Lodge County commissioners to the governor's office for approval. A similar request was submitted last month by Gallatin County commissioners.

Reporter Tim Trainor may be reached via e-mail at tim.trainor@lee.net or call 496-5519.

To see more of The Montana Standard, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.mtstandard.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Montana Standard, Butte
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email
tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax
to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave.,
Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

Tim Trainor

Copyright (C) 2009, The Montana Standard, Butte

Please read the End User Agreement.
By accessing this page, you agree to the terms and conditions of the End User Agreement.

News provided by COMTEX