Surviving the dry conditions of ‘76

CENTRAL MINNESOTA — The year is 1976. Gerald Ford is president of the U.S., which turned 200 that year, the Pittsburgh Steelers have won the Super Bowl and Apple Inc. has just been born. But for Minnesota farmers and those in the agriculture industry, it was a year full of heat, dryness and loss.

“I don’t remember how we made it, but we survived somehow,” said Allen Woitalla, a 77-year-old dairy farmer from Harding.

Early 1976 had gone OK. Planting season, which took place in May, went off without a hitch.

“The year had started out wetter than normal, and everything was looking pretty good, so there was nothing seen on the horizon by farmers,” said Mark Seeley, former extension climatologist and meteorologist at the University of Minnesota.

That May, some counties received less than 0.2 inches. The statewide average rainfall total came to only 0.84 inches — a record low that caused widespread harm to the agricultural industry and economy.

However, not all farmers saw great potential for the year. Woitalla noticed the beginning of the crisis early in the season before the heat even arrived.

“I remember we were in the field in March, and it was dry already,” he said, adding they were preparing to plant small grains.

The lack of winter frost had left the ground vulnerable, making it dry for the season.

Woitalla was milking 36 cows and farming around 300 acres at the time. The drought caused many, including Woitalla, to run low or out of hay — resulting in the start of hay assistance programs. Other states also came to the rescue, bringing over 67,000 tons of hay into Stearns and Todd counties.

“My neighbor, (and) my cousin, Raymond, and I went to Fosston in the summer, and they were combining wheat,” he said. “We had to buy some (hay).”

As the persistent dryness continued, corn yields fell by almost 30%, averaging less than 60 bushels an acre. This led many farmers to either abandon their corn or chop it for silage.

“The corn grew only to about the belt and was pretty much just stalks,” Woitalla said.

For Woitalla, the year felt like a never-ending battle: the pasture dried up, crops were scarce and his father, Peter, who he had been farming with, died. Despite it all, he pushed through.

In June, President Ford invoked a drought declaration for the state, which ensured farmers received federal disaster assistance and access to emergency support programs, such as the Livestock Feed Program through the Stearns County Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service Office and emergency loans offered by the Farmers Home Administration.

Melvin Goebel, now 88, began farming at 8 years old, and was milking around 65 cows that year with his wife, Karen, and father, Robert, at their dairy farm near Freeport. During his almost 70 years as a farmer, Goebel said 1976 was one of the hardest.

“That was a tough year — not very much to do,” Goebel said. “It was the driest that I ever remember.”

As the summer months continued, high temperatures and a lack of rain followed, leaving many farmers to worry how they would water their crops or feed their livestock. Goebel, who was short on feed, worked with his cousin, Victor, to chop corn and hay.

“We mixed (the corn and hay) together. We had half a silo full, and that’s where we had enough feed for that year,” he said. “I know that one field I was on — it was 12 acres — I got four loads of silage.”

Goebel’s pasture also grew dry, and yet, he continued. Today, his son, Dale, and grandson, Tanner, manage the farm that survived.

Seeley said 1976 still stands out in Minnesota’s climate history, even 50 years later. Heading into May, conditions looked promising, but by late spring, things had changed; the onset was unusually rapid.

“If we look at May through September, which is really the heart of the growing season in Minnesota, we typically have anywhere from maybe 15 to 18 inches of rain during that spell,” Seeley said. “But we had places out in Traverse County where they had less than five inches of total rain for May through September.”

In some western counties, like Swift, Big Stone and Chippewa, soil dried out so quickly that winds began blowing bare topsoil before crops were established.

“This was evident in more of the state even later in the season,” Seeley said. “Symptomatically, it had first been in the month of May, because the crops were stunted and the soil was so exposed.”

The drought spurred further change. It led to the creation of a new extension climatology position — Seeley’s own role — and the Center for Farm Financial Management at the University of Minnesota to advise individuals through crises.

Despite the severity of the drought, the recovery came quickly. The following year, 1977, became the wettest year of the 20th century in Minnesota.

“We had a devastating drought with very real consequences to both crop producers and livestock producers, but we turned right around,” Seeley said.

Compared to the 1910 and 1988 droughts, both took several years to recover from, Seeley said.

The rapid recovery, with the turnaround starting that winter, helped many farmers pay back loans and rebuild. However, not everyone stayed in farming.

Today, Minnesota’s climate looks different than it did 50 years ago. Average precipitation for almost all counties in Minnesota is greater, Seeley said, but operating in the background is a variability in precipitation, which is more magnified than it was in the past.

“When we go dry, we really go dry, and when we go wet, we really go wet,” he said.

Fifty years after Woitalla and Goebel hauled hay, chopped short corn for silage and watched soil blow across fields, the details of 1976 have not been forgotten. The climate, weather and tools may have changed, but for Minnesota’s farmers, the stakes when rain does not fall still feel much the same.