Tag: agriculture

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Rural Decay or Handy Tree Shelter?

By Laura Johnson

A bunch of us South Dakota Magaziners were talking about the recent New York Times article”Amid Rural Decay, Trees Take Root in Silos,” which hints at the failure of farm life on the Great Plains by using phrases like”the landscape of rural abandonment” and”a region laden with leaning, crumbling reminders of more vibrant days.”

The article admits that times have changed, and so have farming methods. It’s true. My family still farms, but they no longer store hay or shelter livestock in the barn that my great-great grandfather built shortly after coming to South Dakota in 1869. The old chicken coop is full — not of poultry, but of objects that might come in handy for something someday. Why tear down a structure when you might think of a new use for it? Saving what looks obsolete may be Depression-era thinking, but I come from a long line of jury-riggers, experts at finding a use for a discarded object decades after it first hit the storage shed.

The author of the Times piece, A. G. Sulzberger, cited cost as one reason why abandoned silos still stood. We wondered if he’d ever attempted to knock one down. Bernie Hunhoff told us about his experience at an attempted silo demolition near Gayville. The farmers had read that a few well-aimed blasts from a high-powered rifle could knock out a brick or two and cause the whole structure to tumble. An intense hail of bullets was unleashed and many beers were consumed, but at the end of the day, the silo stood. It’s still standing today.

Rather than view rural ruins as a sign that our prairie civilization is falling apart, I choose to admire nature’s ability to repurpose and reclaim that which we no longer use. There’s a reason why South Dakota photographers love taking shots of ghost towns and old farmsteads. Those abandoned structures have a poignant beauty. They encourage us to think about those who came before us, of the lives they lived and the dreams they had, and perhaps make us a little more aware of the fleetingness of our own time here. But that’s life. It’s nothing to get too worked up about. Here today, gone tomorrow. Unless you’re a silo, that is.

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Here Comes the Goosemobile

Editor’s Note: This article is revised from the story “25 Years of Foods,” which appeared in the September/October 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Tom Neuberger and the South Dakota Goosemobile will be crisscrossing the state again this summer.

A brown cardboard box is nearly the same color as a fine pumpkin pie, but it doesn’t taste the same. So it is with meat and poultry, according to Tom Neuberger, creator of the Goosemobile. He believes that a bird that roams free, dirt-scratching and insect-pecking on the open range, will taste better than one raised in a 12-inch-square wire pen with antibiotics, hormones and other chemicals.

That theory got a severe test in 1984 when Tom and his wife, Ruth, fattened 3,500 geese the natural way and found themselves without a market. They processed the geese and hit the road in a refrigerated bus. The Goosemobile was such a success that they’ve been traveling South Dakota ever since.

Now they offer geese along with natural organic beef, pork, lamb, chicken, duck, flax, down comforters and feather pillows.

If Goosemobile meats didn’t taste better than store-bought, the Neubergers would be home by the fireplace at night. Instead, they’re crisscrossing South Dakota, greeting customers by their first names and proving that there is more than one way to survive on a farm.

Where is the Goosemobile?

This”Mobile Meat Market” may be coming to a town near you. Watch for Tom & Ruth at the Falls Park Farmers Market in Sioux Falls on Saturdays starting May 7, and at locations in the Black Hills August 31st. They’ll also be delivering CSA shares to Mitchell and South Dakota Local Food Co-op orders to members in Brookings this summer.

The Neubergers recommend calling ahead to place your order. Email them at goosedown@unitelsd.com or call 605-296-3314. You’re also welcome to visit them at their farm near Canistota — but call first to make sure they’re home.

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Meat or Vegetables?

By Bernie Hunhoff

This picture has been floating around our magazine office for years. It shows early-day Watertown area hunters with their bounty from a 35-minute hunt. I like the photo because it illustrates the outdoor heritage that we all love. But it hardly speaks to sustainability. Fortunately, we’ve established some common sense limits on hunting and fishing in the decades since and sportsmen now fully support those limits and restrictions.

Dakota Dunes meat-packer BPI became embroiled in a national debate over food labeling this month. Five or six governors rushed to defend the beef product, along with national agriculture leaders. But even as the governors were chomping on burgers at the press conference, they and everybody watching must have been wondering where this is likely to lead.

Americans once were a lot closer to their food and their food processors. Most of us grew up in families that either butchered on the farm or bought beef, pork and poultry from a little grocery store with a butcher in the back.

But food production and processing has been consolidated, and we might actually need to start educating children on where milk and eggs and hot dogs come from. There’s a bill in the Nebraska legislature this year to mandate such schooling.

Meanwhile, more and more people are becoming vegetarians or variations thereof. I was having lunch with a few young people from Sioux Falls last week when one gentleman explained that he was no longer eating meat. So he ordered a salad special. It came, to his surprise, with grilled chicken. He did a double-take, and then decided he could eat it. He’s only been a vegetarian for a week, so what the heck.

He represents American. Conflicted. Curious. Rooted in a nation rich in farm, fishing and filet mignon. But thinking that some changes lie ahead.

He’s re-thinking what he eats, along with many of his generation. It would be a monumental mistake for our farm state to ignore the issue and pretend that everyone will still want to eat hamburgers and hot dogs in 2050. Or that they’ll faithfully eat whatever the food processors churn out.

Anyone interested in having this converstaion may want to hear Dr. James McWilliams, associate professor of history at Texas State University and author of the award-winning book Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly. He will speak on”Animals, Plants and Food: Eating Sustainably in the Twenty-First Century (and Beyond)” at 7 p.m. on Saturday, April 14, in Augustana’s Gilbert Science Center Auditorium, room 100. The event is free and open to the public.

According to an Augustana College media release, McWilliams’ talk will explore the idea that the primary problem with”sustainable agriculture” and”the food movement” is our failure to come to terms with the economic, environmental and ethical dimensions of animal production and consumption. The only way food can be sustainable in a world of more than 7 billion people, he argues, is to do something as radical as it is common-sensical: Grow plants for people.

“One of the things sorely lacking in our public discourse is the ability to weigh the pros and cons of an issue,” McWilliams says.”Instead, arguments about anything take on a kind of religious fervor. So when I see conventional wisdom forming around an idea, I like to poke holes in it. I think any idea with legitimacy is going to withstand having holes poked in it and will actually be stronger as a result.”

Farmers know better than anyone that change is the only sure thing. Food and eating habits are going to change dramatically in a generation or two — for a variety of reasons — and nothing will change that.

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Left and Right Find Common Ground in Opposition to Mega-Dairies

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

It can be lonely on the”Left” in South Dakota. William Pratt’s essay in The Plains Political Tradition contends that South Dakota’s Left dissolved in the 1930s and hasn’t resurged since. It thus makes sense that we hardy Dakota Lefties end up consorting with some distinctly un-Left characters.

Consider dairy politics. For years, South Dakota policy has favored enormous concentrated animal feeding operations that milk thousands of cattle a day. The state actively recruits foreign operators and investors to invest millions of dollars in these mega-dairies.

With my Lefty goggles, I see such mega-dairies doing more harm than good to South Dakota. These CAFOs pour tons of manure into their lagoons, creating a stench and ongoing environmental risk to surrounding watersheds. Cattle in crowded CAFO conditions require more antibiotics, which get into both the milk and the environment. The state’s support of these mega-dairies makes it even harder for small family dairies to survive.

These Left-flavored concerns about big dairies align me awkwardly with Representative Stace Nelson. The Fulton Republican is at least as far Right as I am Left. This year, Rep. Nelson has spoken up on behalf of Hanson County neighbors who want to block a proposed 7000-head dairy in their neighborhood. These dairy opponents mention pollution, but they are concerned about another issue associated with big dairies: illegal immigration.

I worry that concerns about illegal immigration often mask (thinly) an unpalatable rejection of people who don’t look like us. I can sympathize with Mexicans who travel 2000 miles to this strange, cold land to milk cows and make a living they can’t make back home.

But I can also sympathize with my Hanson County neighbors. No one should break the law to work here. No one should make money on the backs of an illegal (and thus easily exploitable) workforce. I thus find myself hoping that the very right-wing Rep. Nelson can raise concerns about South Dakota’s mega-dairies that my left-wing voice cannot carry as well here.

And as I write this story, Rep. Nelson makes news saying his party leadership is taking away his seat on the House Agriculture committee over his opposition to the Hanson County Dairy. Hmm… party leaders putting big business interests over voicing concerns of common citizens… that sounds like one more issue where Right and Left might find some common ground.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and is currently teaching French at Spearfish High School. A longtime country dweller, Cory is enjoying “urban” living with his family in Spearfish.

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Empty Bowls is Quite Fulfilling

By Bernie Hunhoff

Brookings folks gathered at the United Church of Christ on 8th Street last night for the eighth annual Empty Bowls banquet. They invited me to come and say a few words about hunger and South Dakota’s food culture. Considering the fact that words like POOR and POVERTY make us very uncomfortable in this state, it was inspiring to gather with several hundred folks who are not only willing to talk about such disturbing words but actually want to do something about it.

In a few hours, the crowd raised $7,300 for Heifer International. I sat by a farm couple from Sinai. They make donations to Heifer International annually to honor the memory of their son, who died five years ago. The motivations were many, but the cause was one.

The “banquet” consisted of a bowl of soup and a bun, served in beautiful bowls handcrafted by South Dakota’s favorite potter, Dave Huebner of nearby Bushnell. There was music and prayers and a little nonsense from me.

For example, I told the story of the Wertz brothers from Bancroft, S.D., in Kingsbury County. The young brothers loved to farm, but in the 1930s it didn’t even pay to plant so they decided to start a cereal factory. They knew they needed a “gun” to puff the wheat, so they made one from the parts of an old threshing machine. Having no engineering training, they made sure it was plenty big.

They rented a building in Bancroft, set up the big gun and fired it off. KABOOOOM! They nearly blew down the building. It was a bit too powerful.

So they went back to the threshing machine and found a smaller auger, and they downsized the gun. They found another building in Bancroft, and soon they were selling New Deal Puffed Wheat far and wide for 10 cents a bag.

Why can’t you buy New Deal Puffed Wheat in your local grocery store today? There’s a very simple reason.

The Wertz brothers were farmers. As soon as it rained, they closed the factory and went back to the land.

We are a farming people in South Dakota. We grow food. If anybody should care about poverty and hunger, it’s us. Last night it was a treat to gather with 200 who care very deeply.

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Corn Maze Provides Fall Fun

Yankton area folks going to Hebda Family Produce to pick their own pumpkins this month will want to study this photo well, as it depicts this year’s corn maze. Dale and Rena Hebda and family got their start in the world of fresh produce in 2002, when their son Steven started growing vegetables for 4-H. As he expanded into farmers’ market sales and weekly home delivery of produce, his interest grew into a family business. In 2006, the Hebdas purchased Garritys’ Prairie Gardens, located north and west of Mission Hill, where their 55 acre farm produces a variety of fruits and vegetables, jams, jellies, salsa and pies, and fun harvest-related activities for the whole family.

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The Wheat Ritual

Story and Photos by Bernie Hunhoff

Teams of combines often assemble to harvest the sprawling fields of Sully County, easily the wheat capital of South Dakota. Farmers there generally plant more than 230,000 acres of wheat. In 2007 they grew 10.5 million bushels. Photo by Dave Tunge.

Dakota Wheat Field

By Hamlin Garland

Like liquid gold the wheat-field lies,
A marvel of yellow and russet and green,

That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,
With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen,

That play in the golden hair of a girl, –
A ripple of amber — a flare

Of light sweeping after — a curl
In the hollows like swirling feet
Of fairy waltzers, the colors run

To the western sun
Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.

Wheat is just dark bread to most Americans, but it encompasses history, geography and a way of life for thousands of South Dakota farm families who harvest 3.5 million acres in summer rituals that connect us to the very first homesteaders.

The grain harvest was once a community event, as families joined forces for the labor-intense binding, shocking and threshing. Today, lone farmers race across wheat fields in gleaming and computerized five-ton metal combines with GPS systems and air conditioned cabs that harvest more than 100 acres on a good day, but the principle remains the same as when the work was done by hands and horses.

Modern combines eliminate much of the toil and tedium from the wheat harvest. Still, a flurry of activity can be seen in farm country as the heads ripen and droop with grain.

“Like liquid gold the wheat field lies,” wrote pioneer Hamlin Garland, a Dakota homesteader who later became a popular American novelist. Garland found farm life tedious, but he appreciated the beauty of a ripening wheat field and the bounty that it represents.

West River cowboys and city residents who haven’t experienced the appeal of harvest might compare it to the satisfaction of the last day of a good school year, to the serenity of a hike in some quiet woods, or to the success of a roundup when every cow and calf is accounted for.

Cultivation of wheat began 10,000 years ago when the Neolithic people of Asia began to replant wild grasses and collect the seeds for food. European emigrants brought seeds overseas. Today 10 percent of the world’s 22 billion bushel wheat crop is grown in the United States, mostly in the six prairie states that stretch from the Dakotas to Texas. South Dakotans raise and harvest about 76 million bushels every summer.

Corn, soybeans and cattle are economically more significant statewide, but wheat is still king to some farmers in north central South Dakota. John O. Overby homesteaded in Spink County near Northville in 1883, and then moved to a farm east of Mellette in 1886. He and his wife raised five sons who became wheat farmers. Overbys have lived in the same farmhouses and planted the same fields for five generations.

“When they first came here, wheat was the predominant crop,” says Glenn Overby, today’s patriarch.”Of course everybody had some livestock but wheat was the big cash crop into the 1940s.”

Humans have been planting and harvesting wheat for 10,000 years. Glenn Overby was raised in a family that was devoted to perfecting wheat and other aspects of farm and ranch life.

The Overby brothers owned an Avery threshing machine.”It took 12 bundle racks to keep it going with spike pitchers,” Glenn says.”We had a cook car in the yard. Can you imagine all the bread they had to bake and all the chickens they had to butcher to just feed the workers?”

Tom Kilian, a longtime Sioux Falls educator and conservationist, grew up on a Miner County farm where threshing was a summer highlight. In his 2007 book Old Days on the Prairie, Kilian recalled the quick pace.”All the tasks were performed as fast as possible and this provided opportunity for the more macho of the young farm hands to demonstrate muscle,” he wrote.”Who could load and unload the fastest? Who could get out to the field, load up and come back the quickest, driving the most spirited horses? And who could do those things with flair and careless energy so as to stand out in the group?”

Despite the size and speed of today’s combines, a sense of urgency still surrounds the harvest. Any change in the weather — wind, rain or hail — might dramatically decrease the yield. Though a field may be golden brown and heavy with heads of grain, farmers don’t consider it a success until it is harvested and hauled to the safety of a steel bin either on the farm or at a local elevator.

Even then, there’s the question of price. Wheat milling, like meat-packing and other food processing industries, has experienced massive consolidations in the last half-century. More than 1,200 mills competed to buy wheat in the heydays of the 1940s; today fewer than 400 operate, and they are generally located near metropolitan populations far from the prairie wheat fields. That leaves farmers dependent on the vagaries of a less-competitive market, and also on the resourcefulness of the railroads to move the grain out-of-state.

Despite such uncertainties, South Dakota farmers carry on the 10,000-year human tradition of planting and harvesting wheat. The Overbys have always exemplified the determination to continue our wheat-growing ways.

Glenn’s dad, John, wanted better yields and more consistent quality. He had a South Dakota farmer’s healthy aversion to the commercial seed companies so he experimented for decades with his own seed plots. He kept extensive records, handwritten in pencil.

“Creating a new wheat variety is a long process,” says Glenn, who has all the record books, as well as an understanding and appreciation for what his dad accomplished.”First, one needs a vision to pick the varieties that have the qualities wanted in the new plant. Wheat has both male and female parts in each kernel’s blossom so it is self-pollinating. Before the female blossom is mature the three male antlers must be removed by opening the hull with a tweezers to take them out,” he says.”Several days later, when the male blossom ripens the pollen sacs are transferred by tweezers to the female blossom. When the pollen is mature it is only viable for about five minutes so timing is critical.”

His dad cross-pollinated up to 100 different plants a year using 10 to 15 kernels each. The selection process occurred when he planted the hybrid plant the next year. It took between seven and 10 years for him to get enough grain to just do a milling and baking test.

The Mellette farmer-scientist had only an eighth grade education but he learned agronomy from reading books.”Dad was interested in getting a better variety for himself and his neighbors,” said Glenn.”He wasn’t interested in starting a big business. He wanted a high protein wheat with a strong stalk that didn’t shatter or shell out too easily, was drought resistant and disease resistant.”

The work was so exacting that he insisted on doing it personally, but the entire family lived with the experiments.”When he harvested he would pull the wheat stalk out by the roots because he wanted to see how the root was growing. He would tie a single row into a bundle and 20 rows into a larger bundle. In two rooms upstairs, he stored the bundles, threshed each row in a box with a wood block, weighed, recorded notes, evaluated and decided which to continue crossing or discard for the next year.”

He devoted 50 years, often on his knees with a tweezer, to improve the tradition of growing wheat …

John Overby started his experiments in 1915 and by 1928 he was selling his own variety, Marvel Wheat, for $2 a bushel. Because of Marvel’s high protein and test weight it sometimes sold for 50 cents more per bushel than other kinds of wheat.

The part-time plant breeder developed another variety known as Spinkcota and gradually he attracted loyal customers. Glenn helped his father clean wheat seed and loaded it for customers. He remembers when the well-known Asmussens of Agar became the first farmers to buy more than 100 bushels.”We loaded their truck and took it to the Mellette elevator to weigh and then they stayed for lunch,” he says.

Farmers believed Spinkcota had higher yields and was better suited to the South Dakota soil than its corporate competition. Ralph Sorensen, the Spink County extension agent in the 1940s, became a believer and he got the attention of Darrell Wells and other plant scientists at South Dakota State College in Brookings.

When academic researchers reported at a Minneapolis milling and baking conference that Spinkcota was not a favorite among commercial bakers, Sorensen retorted that the South Dakota seed had endured the 1953 rust epidemic better than the competition and that farmers were developing quite a liking to the variety.

As Overby was nearing the end of his career, he witnessed the beginning of what is now called the green revolution. Wheat yields doubled in the 1960s and 1970s due to an expansion of modern farming practices, better seed varieties and the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. A leader of the movement was Norman Borlaug, an Iowa-born scientist who — like Overby — saw farming as a way to improve the world.

Ruth and Glenn Overby (far right) live in the house where Glenn’s father experimented with wheat varieties. Pictured with them are their son, Philip, his wife, Linda, and grandson A.J., who represents a fifth generation on the same farm.

Overby grew test plots even as an old man, and he continued to gain respect from both his neighbors and the agricultural community. In 1962 the Brentford Congregational Church held a John Overby Appreciation Banquet. Charles Croes, the first leader of the South Dakota Wheatgrowers Cooperative, was one of the dignitaries who came to pay tribute.”Probably one of man’s most tragic shortcomings down through the ages has been his lack of interest in doing something for the benefit of his fellow man, his neighbor, without being first assured that he would profit money-wise for the doing,” Croes said.”The richer reward, the knowledge that his action has helped his fellow man, has been all too often overlooked, given second place or lost entirely.”

Not John Overby, however. He devoted 50 years, often on his knees with a tweezer in his fingers, to improving a South Dakota wheat-growing tradition that was in its infancy during his lifetime.

Glenn and his wife, Ruth, live on the farm where the test plots were raised and bundles were stored and inspected. They have all of John Overby’s journals and records, and many of his tools and memorabilia.

Their son, Philip and his wife, Linda, live just across the grove of trees. Philip farms the land today, with help from Linda and their son, A.J., who studies agriculture at SDSU and represents the fifth generation of Overbys to harvest wheat in Spink County.

“In many ways it’s the same even though the equipment has changed,” Glenn says, as he watches Philip cross a field in a combine that moves like a ship at sea, only noisier and dustier. The sky over Spink County is a deep blue, contrasting with the golden wheat stalks and green corn in the neighboring field.

The land here is so flat that you can see another combine a mile away, sailing above its own square sea of wheat. Nothing is certain in life, but the Spink County wheat harvest has become a predictable summer rite thanks to families like the Overbys who have tended to both the land and the custom.

Overby Inventions Exhibited at SDSU

John Overby’s creative mind roamed well beyond plant breeding. He and his brothers invented several farm improvements, and some can be seen at the State Agricultural Heritage Museum in Brookings.

Curator Dawn Stephens says the Overby inventions include a windmill regulator, a stock waterer, a contraption that mounted on the wheel of an automobile to harvest small grains and, naturally, a better mouse trap.

Stephens assisted the Overby family in producing a documentary,”John Overby: Wheat Breeding Methods,” that can be purchased for $15 at the museum (or by phone at 688-5904).”He and his brothers were very inventive. I can’t believe the things they thought to make,” she says.”And they were not afraid to voice their opinions and stand up for what they believed in. They worked hard to make farming life better.”

The ag museum, located on the South Dakota State University campus, also has antique wheat harvest equipment such as a Norwegian hand crank thresher, an 1890 Case Agitator with original paint, a Massey combine, an IH grain binder and a 1915 John Deere hay press that still works.

The museum staff will play the Overby film for visitors upon request.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 2009 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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South Dakota’s Corn Culture

By Cindy Lange

Imagine South Dakota without corn. What would we feed our livestock? How would Mitchell decorate its Palace? Where would we hunt pheasants? What would farmers wear for caps?

Today we take for granted oceans of tasseled corn waving in the August breezes. We expect a local radio station to hold a “longest ear” or “tallest stalk” contest every September.

Corn, a leafy grass that gets little respect outside of agricultural circles, was ingrained into our prairie culture even before farm settlers arrived in the 19th century. Experts agree that the plant originated in Mexico or South America. As American Indians moved north, they brought along their seed corn.

When eastern farmers arrived in Dakota Territory, they assumed the growing season was too short for corn. The region was also considered borderline desert so annual rainfall was also a concern. At first it was planted as a sod crop.

“The summer the land was broken, there was little raised except sod corn and a few potatoes and vegetables,” according to Herbert S. Schell in History of South Dakota. “Indeed at times it was possible to raise a fair sod crop of corn from seed dropped in holes and chopped in with an axe.”

Corn farmers back then could only have dreamed of planting corn under today’s conditions: with a multi-row planter, sitting in an air-conditioned cab listening to the radio or talking on a cell phone, while simultaneously applying weed-deterring solutions. Most were lucky to have a horse, an ox or a plow – or to know a neighbor who did.

Though that made farming hot, dusty, hard work, many weren’t willing to trust amateurs at planting time because the family’s livelihood often depended on the crop. “Corn planting was the trickiest operation performed during the spring season, and many farmers insisted on doing it themselves, without the aid of hired men or family members,” according to Paula M. Nelson in The Prairie Winnows Out its Own.

Farmers stretched long rolls of wire from one end of the field to the other to establish rows and the proper distance between plants. “The wire contained knots every 40 inches, and when those knots passed through the planter mechanism, the machine dropped two or three seeds at the proper place in the row,” according to Nelson. At the end of the row the farmer would move the wire and begin again.

Precision was critical. “If the farmer worked carefully, kept the horses neatly in line, and set the trap door in the planter boxes correctly, the corn would grow in forty-inch intervals in each direction and could be cultivated lengthwise and crosswise.” Not many farmers today can boast such a feat.

Relying on the calendar told some farmers when it was time to plant corn and avoid frosts. Others planted when the leaves on hardwood trees were as large as a squirrel’s or mouse’s ear, or when they spotted the first bobolink or oriole, according to Funk & Wagnall’s Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend. Some wouldn’t trust kernels to the earth until spotting a redheaded woodpecker, though. Farmers could follow the advice of a corn-planting rhyme if they weren’t sure how many kernels to plant:

One for the cut worm.
One for the crow
One for the blackbird
And three to grow.

Whether any of the old wives’ tales or advice worked is debatable, but something was making South Dakota corn grow. Soon the state became regarded as one of nation’s corn planting states.

“The skeptic on this question is no longer heard, and the man who would disdain South Dakota soil because of its inability to produce corn has been shown his error,” Clifford Willis, an agronomist, wrote in Corn, a 1909 report. “In fact, men who once scoffed are now buying South Dakota farms on which they expect to grow corn.”

In that year, 65.25 million bushels of corn were produced on 2,059,000 acres of South Dakota farmland. Willis said it averaged 31.7 bushels an acre but added, “We know that there are farmers who produced eighty and a hundred bushels to the acre. Someone must have produced a very low yield to so lower the average.”

Conditions were better in 1914, and the State Department of Immigration used corn to tempt sellers to South Dakota. A promotional booklet, Corn Is King in South Dakota, boasted farmers’ successes and the land’s abilities in addition to mentioning popular attractions like the Black Hills.

“The area devoted to corn is increasing rapidly and is extending to every nook and corner of the state, and yields of 40 to 50 bushels per acre are the common thing,” it read. Boast yields like that today and you’ll not only be blamed for lowering the state’s average but you might also find yourself laughed out of the local elevator’s coffee circle.

Maybe those early promoters weren’t so far off. Tourism officials are still using corn to attract visitors to one South Dakota city. Considering the number of visitors who pilgrimage to the city’s corn-covered palace each year, it appears to be working.

Mitchell’s corn-filled tradition began in 1892 when civic promoters decided to stage a harvest festival in a grain decorated building. Sioux City, Iowa, had been holding a similar event, first begun in 1887.

“However, when the fifth venture in 1891 was a financial failure, the backers decided to forego any future shows and it was then that the South Dakota town alertly seized the opportunity to capitalize on the Corn Palace theme,” Robert F. Karolevitz wrote in Challenge: The South Dakota Story.

Obviously, Mitchell is proud of its Corn Palace image. Many businesses have adopted “palace” as part of their names and the school’s athletic teams are known as the Kernels. And 500,000 people visit the palace, now at its third location, from Memorial Day to Labor Day each year.

Mitchell officials no longer question the power of corn. Neither did Delores Walter, a lifelong Howard farm wife, who wrote about rural living for the city’s Daily Republic newspaper. A bumper crop almost halted her wedding.

“In 1948, the corn crop was so abundant that we didn’t think we could take time off to get married. After all, a couple can get married any old time, but there will not always be a big corn crop to harvest,” Walter wrote in a Nov. 5, 1992, column. “But being practical and being in love doesn’t always go together. We were married November 6, 1948.”

Corn has played an equally important role for Elk Point’s Curry family members who have built their lives around corn. J.J. Curry began his Curry Seed Company with a 20-acre field in the 1930s. Today, over 3,000 acres are planted to seed corn within a 15-mile radius, and more and more farmers in the region are using their product.

J.J.’s son Ed, who led the family business when we spoke with him in 1997, said the development of hybrid seeds replaced the settlers’ practice of open pollinated corn and created increased yields. “In the Thirties, an 80 bushel crop was tremendous,” Curry said. “Now 180 bushels is obtainable, and certain test plots produce over 200 bushel yields.”

Technology has produced hundreds of corn hybrids, all varying in maturities to suit different needs. Curry research and testing has produced 20 varieties for the current market.

Advanced technology also allows seed corn to be harvested in half the time and to be dried mechanically with natural gas heat. Such improvements always come with a price, in this case it’s increased production costs.

That’s not enough to make Curry long for the days of hand picking, when harvesting 100 bushels in a day was a mark of achievement.

Though he doesn’t miss “the good old days,” he has tried to use the stories to cheer up young detasselers. Once on a hot day in wet conditions when the kids were really tired, he told them he had been detasseling corn since 1938.

It didn’t stir much encouragement. One little shaver looked at him and said, “You sure as heck haven’t gotten very far.”

Burton Ode, a farmer from Brandon, also remembered when corn was picked by hand. To help with the harvest, farmers hired transients who worked their way north following the grain harvest and then worked back south picking corn.

For their efforts, Ode recalled men earning first two cents and then 10 cents a bushel. Though horse-drawn corn pickers had arrived the 1920s and ’30s, they weren’t much better. “They were meager machines,” he told us in 1997. “It took a lot of horses to pull them.”

Then single and two-row pickers came in the late 1930s. “They were real good machines but no one could afford them.”

Finally, after World War II things boomed and mechanical pickers ruled until the late 1950s or early ë60s. That’s when Ode said an Illinois farmer decided there must be a way to use a combine for something other than grains. “He rigged up something in the front of the combine to make the corn run into it,” Ode said. “They really took off.”

Machines today are even more laborsaving. Gone are the days when farmers scraped the kernels from each cob. They no longer have to shell it by flailing it, driving oxen or horses across it, or by driving the ear through a metal ring with a mallet. Picking, husking and shelling can be done in one easy step now.

Eighty-five years after the Department of Immigration published its booklet, corn is still king in South Dakota. In 2010 farmers harvest 569.7 million bushels of corn, the state’s third largest crop on record.

How much corn is too much? That’s the million-dollar question every year in South Dakota. The largest percentage of the corn raised in South Dakota is used as livestock feed.

It’s hard to believe a little kernel of corn can do so much to critters but each kernel contains 61 percent starch, 19.2 percent protein and fiber, 3.8 percent oil and 16 percent water. Corn that isn’t used for animal feed is either exported or used to make co-products, all of the different products corn can be used in. That’s the fastest growing part of the industry.

One bushel of corn can yield 31.5 pounds of starch, 33 pounds of sweetener or 2.5 gallons of ethanol. You can also get 10.9 pounds of protein feed, 2.6 pounds of gluten meal or 1.6 pounds of corn oil.

Supermarket shelves hold more than 3,500 products that contain corn in some form – everything from detergents to crayons to batteries, sweeteners, soda pop, golf tees, road de-icer, trash bags and fuel in the form of ethanol, which is a multi-million dollar industry all of its own.

Corn can be grown almost anywhere, but because East River counties enjoy adequate rainfall, good soils and the necessary heat units, they tend to produce the most corn. Top producers in 2010 were Minnehaha, Spink, Brown, Moody, Lincoln, Hutchinson, Brookings, Union, Turner and Beadle counties, each topping 18 million bushels. Other counties such as Roberts, Kingsbury, Lake, McCook and Charles Mix, which produced around 17 million bushels, weren’t far behind.

Statistics show Harding, Perkins, Lawrence, Meade, Custer, Fall River and Jackson counties produced little or no corn that same year. Land west of the river tends to be better suited for rangeland, winter wheat or other small grains and sunflowers.

Early farmers didn’t have the benefit of that knowledge. “The earliest pioneers with any agricultural experience in their past were doomed by their ignorance of the new land since they were determined to practice the eastern forms of farming on the stubborn sod of Hand County,” Scott Heidepriem wrote in Bring on the Pioneers! History of Hand County.

They modified the methods after several failures after discovering eastern corn needed a longer growing season to avoid being nipped by September frost. Eventually, Hand County fanners and others turned to a shorter variety such as squaw corn.

The further west pioneers tried to grow corn the more difficult it became. “For farmers the west river country posed a riddle they had not yet been able to answer. Settlers had lived on the land for fifteen years or so by the 1920s, but farmers still learned mostly by trial and error what their land could produce,” according to Paula M. Nelson.

They kept trying even though they grew it profitably only every other year.

“Given the difficult environment, the commitment to corn is surprising, but corn was a versatile crop with many uses, and it also symbolized ‘the farm’ to west river residents ….”

It’s nice to know some things will never change. An unending sea of green leaves and golden tassels swaying in the breeze will always symbolize the farm to South Dakotans.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the July/August 1997 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.