Iowa Farm Damage

[Music] morning dogs it's early morning now and i expect today to be somewhat of a long day i'm gonna drive down to iowa and check out all the storm damage they had in the central part of the state and then i'm gonna head over to the eastern part of the state and i'm gonna visit my buddy mitchell hora who is my co-host on the field work podcast that's gonna be in the next video today we're gonna check out the storm damage but first i gotta drive down to the northwest corner of iowa and check out an auction it's about a three and a half hour drive just to get to my first destination of the day so i'm gonna speed this up for you guys that was easier so these machines are gonna be up on auction actually in just about an hour and a half from right now i'm gonna take take a look at this 780 then i also got a 680 on the other side of it i want to look at as long as they as well as a couple 8000 series tractors up there i'm passing through iowa anyway why not go a couple hundred miles out of the way just to uh check out some equipment you never know i'm staring at that 780 right now i just got here feeder house chain looks good it should it's only got 580 total separator hours tires are good on it i'm not a fan of this uh rim damage but it it's holding air everything appears to be okay back here i'm liking the prairie big top it does not have the folding hopper just notice that which i've actually heard as long as you can fit them in your sheds that's a little more maintenance free looks fine inside there oil's been changed belts and pulleys look okay clean grain auger all right here's where a lot of the time you can tell what kind of a person had it before it's a clean machine under the others well it's still my phone still shows us as high baiter what's the computer saying um getting back to it oh no we must well it's still saying four minutes left oh yeah mine's still a high bidder that's the same with mine it jumped back to four minutes but it shows us as high bid maybe we got it here because nobody else did then well now my phone my phone went back to four minutes again and it still shows high bidder again and it doesn't show more bids really oh now now somebody came over top of us they did didn't they yeah they did one more time unless you don't want to i'm fine quitting hmm oh there's somebody else somebody two two more it just jumped twice the ones are crazy high yeah i'm sure this thing two years ago was five or close yeah 450. but then you look at low hour 680s if you can find one if you can find a low hour 680 it's going to be 100 grand cheaper yeah it's going to stay 100 grand cheaper or 80 grand cheaper over time too it will yep yep i think let it go and we'll just keep watching for something else okay we tried on to the rest of my road trip i guess okay about three and a half hours later and i am on highway 20 right now just west of fort dodge iowa i'm starting to see some definite damage it's not every single field and it's really inconsistent this field here looks pretty decent but i've seen some fields that do have considerable wind damage i'm also seeing a lot of corn that is dry showing some real signs of stress from from being too dry that started about 100 miles back to the northwest of here and it seems to be getting a little bit a little more uh prevalent here in this area for whatever reason it seems like the beans are not showing it nearly as much as the corn but the corn is dry and i'm definitely seeing wind damage so we'll see what i start to get into as i continue my way east here before too long i will turn and go south towards ames and then the plan is to meet some people near huxley yes huxley iowa sounds like there's some work going on there some cleanup i'm going to hit as much as i can but it's already it's gotten later in the day than i expected so we'll rush through i'm gonna use up all the daylight that i have today 15 miles north of ames iowa and uh most of the leaves are stripped off the cornfields here definitely seeing a little bit more wind damage but uh more so vegetative damage like it must have been hail missing a lot of a lot of leaves on the corn just exited the interstate between ames and des moines and clearly some serious devastation in this area i've seen some signs and billboards down a lot of trees twisted up but so far i have not i haven't seen any buildings missing that is the third power line crew i've seen in the last two miles they are out fixing down fixing up all sorts of downed power lines out here turned off on a gravel road here i've got a guy up the road that i'm gonna meet it's harder to tell from this angle but that corn is really down we are near now huxley you said huxley island huxley iowa and i'm here with paul paul's got some row crops you got corn and soybeans yes and hogs and we are standing in this was the sow building right this was a fair wine house farrowing house that he was in when the storm hit here and i i was told the windmill just over the hill here clocked the wind speeds at over 130 miles per hour that day i hadn't even heard that one yet that was pretty close to a category 4 hurricane yeah category 4 hurricane winds as you can see here i mean it's crazy being here and seeing what happened i mean i'm i'm in it now i was coming down the road giving them some updates and talking about what i saw and once i got off i-35 out here it's apparent i mean you can you can really see it but paul's got kind of a crazy story here where he was actually working in the barn when the storm hit walk us through what happened there just patched a crate floor getting ready for weaning and heard the storm come heard the wind hit the building next thing i knew the lights were out so i came out to this entryway just to see what was going on looked out the door rain going sideways no i didn't belong out there so we have a nursery that was attached to this farrowing house thought i'd get into that because that was the furthest away from the wind and i as i walked in i watched the roof go away thought that's not such a good idea turned around came back here thought about getting in the crate thought at least i'd be protected somewhat and i watched this roof go so i finally just got down here in the corner and a little hair raising but said a prayer started saying a few songs and next thing i knew it it seemed like a tornado the wind kept sounding like it was howling more and more and more but i finally had to pull the plywood over because there was a crack and little hail coming down but other than that i firmly believe god was standing here holding this wall up well something something kept the wall up in the roof above you that day yeah did you assume it was a tornado when it was happening i did for the first two minutes don't last that long how long do you think you were hiding in here oh over 30 minutes wow that's crazy yes it's very scary situation i can i cannot imagine actually i mean it is crazy you look at the way the trees are tattered up and just about every bin is damaged here you've got one in the pile over there and it's crazy i'm just uh glad you and you and the family are safe you know you're you're standing here to tell the story so and thank you for doing that thank you for you can see here across the road this is paul's farm yet there's three bins there where the roofs are caved in i would assume those bins are probably bent um he said there's not much grain in them so those are probably gone um there's an auger broke here tree's laying on stuff he's got a grain bin laying in the yard here sounds like he lost most of his storage and by the looks of it most of his buildings here i'm gonna walk out past the hogs here and take a look at some of his corn so this is not not anywhere close to the worst i've seen but it's very inconsistent across the fields i'd say this is probably about average if you look down in here there is a a decent amount that is actually broke this is obviously going to be a total loss they won't be able to pick that up the defoliation is gonna stop it from finishing off the way it should and harvest is probably gonna be a nightmare in a lot of these spots because it's hard to harvest corn that's down this corn is far enough along that it's not going to uh it's not going to goose neck and come back up like it would if if this had happened six weeks ago or a month ago it's a shame this is this looks like it was decent corn but this is what they've got now there's another larger grain bin here that's obviously finished more trees down there there's actually this floor supports for this grain bin up here i was told that is the roof of the building that paul was hiding in one of the one of the sides of the roof just incredible now i'm here with dennis with go serve we're still on on paul's farm here go serve is kind of going around right now and cleaning things up and dennis and mike i'll just call them dennis and mike they got in touch with me earlier today when i put it out there that i was gonna be down in this area and they told me why don't you swing on by and and i had talked to mike before and i knew about go serve but for the people who don't know about go serve can you tell them a little bit about what you guys do and what you're doing here to help out and i'll just say it was started by an iowa farmer uh it started out the earthquake in haiti that's a whole nother story sukup in the safety home that's a whole nother story just a great story there but here and we're in the huxley area and this derecho went through and you know you've showed him some of the footage it it's devastating i just saw a map there were two slivers of where they confirmed over 100 mile an hour winds we've been working in huxley with uh families in town and most of the families we're working with are you know in their seventies and eighties and they just have no way that they can clean up the properties themselves so go serve we're here uh a faith-based ministry to just come alongside them what we do best is we bring in resources and we work alongside volunteers that are on site family members and we can come in and clean out property so that's what we're doing here i mean you showed him some of this stuff it's just overwhelming in my devastation and we're just here to lend a hand god loves us we're passing that on well i really appreciate you guys getting in touch with me and taking the time to show me around a little bit here and and to show the viewers here what's really going on in iowa the devastation that's here and as crazy as this is it's you know i know about it because i'm i'm involved in agriculture and i follow what's happening in farming and so we know about it but i think there's a lot of people out there who haven't heard that much about this and how widespread it is and how many miles this covered and i haven't even i haven't talked about yet the fact that this was a director or the ratio or i hadn't even heard of it until now but hundreds of miles long this storm was massive 770 miles is what i heard 770 miles long and they're estimating around 10 million corn acres affected correct i believe that's the right number and the amount of grain bins that i've seen personally or on facebook and stuff though it's just crazy what this 100 mile an hour winds did and it wasn't you know in the midwest we get 100 mile an hour gusts right this was ex you know people are telling me 20 to 40 minutes long depending where they were sustained 600 miles plus at least 80. you know 100 mile was probably the top but i mean imagine 20 mile or 80 mile an hour winds for 20 minutes right this is some of the corn right across the road i'm gonna jump out to look at it but a quick note here i wanted to mention go serve global again and just say that those guys run entirely off of donations and volunteers and um as such i think it's a great uh it's a great cause and so i left them with a donation because unfortunately i'm not able to volunteer tonight so if anybody else is interested i would encourage that at least check them out they do uh some great work as you can see wow isn't it amazing how row number one stood and as soon as you cross that line this is this is crazy it's mostly below my knees that is devastating i'm headed down the road to our next visit here but the damage just doesn't end you can see the trees ripped apart every farm site's got buildings and grain bins that are tore up not to mention there is power crews everywhere everywhere you go and there are tons of people around here who still don't have power and it has been one week to the day today since this storm hit so we're down in the cornfield here now just a few miles south of where we were before i'm here with mike phil lee and two nicks i got it right got it right i got it all i'm good we're good so these guys farm down here we are um we're still by huxley is that would that be the address of where we're standing here and it sounds like unfortunately you guys were headed for what you think was probably one of your best corn crops ever till you were nailed with this thing yeah we were kind of a 220 225 average area and i think we were headed for that plus a little bit in this in this geography um you go west you start getting into some drought stress i think it would have been a little bit less than that but this area i don't know you guys agree about 225 would be a good target for where i thought we were going so now like with this corn here it's not gonna be fun to harvest but uh you know it's standing compared to some of the stuff i've walked in i've gone through a lot of stuff that's broken off and you can tell it's it's shutting down it's done this stuff's hanging in there but it's defoliated so much what do you what do you think is going to happen with the stuff that looks like this this has already stood back up quite a bit from last week when this came through so we're about exactly a week just over a week from this morning when it went through and this has stood back up a lot but like you see here all the tattering and everything this plant isn't going to be able to have the photosynthesis and all that other stuff to fill out the grain quite as much as it would have so we're going to be looking at probably some lower test weights probably looking at a little bit of the tip back we're not going to be able to finish some of the kernels i i think we're going to be down 10 or better from what we could have been without it 10 is probably a good number to put on that 8 to 10 percent now some of these other fields that are not standing as nice as this is i mean you're probably going to be looking at anywhere from 20 percent lost to a bit green snapped or if it crimped on the ground you could be looking at the point where you can't even get it off the ground and get it and on top of that it's all going to be a nightmare to harvest now isn't it this will be the field you look forward to harvesting some of the other stuff i mean it's going to be as far as their stuff we won't harvest i think yeah and it's really going to come down to what crop gestures say they can and can't do but yeah there's there's some fields right now that i mean i think that you almost would be as good going out there in vertical tail and when you start seeing the corn turning brown after this event and dying off you know that it's done mile north of here there's a whole field already turning brown so that's that's got no chance for covers just a field that's about reels combining with reels and then just combining the same same direction go around the field and keep combining from the east or the west or north or south and use a corn reel to help feed it in yeah all options are on the table yep i think right now i mean what a lot of farmers are doing i'm sure you can't probably even buy a reel right now i mean they probably sold out in the last week but you're going to want to have a reel on you're going to want to be scouting your fields looking for which ones that you think you can go after and which ones need to be going after first and honestly this looks bad but this might be the one this might be the one you leave because it might stay yeah and but then you don't want to leave it there too long because otherwise you might lose what you do have right well you can see i mean it's been beat up but it's standing and it's still green it should it should finish i mean this should still finish the race a lot of the other stuff has put a 80 yard drive in and is giving it up in the red zone yeah another thing is now if we do get to a situation i think where you do have an adjuster say you're going to walk away from that field it's done right and you go out and destroy it that's going to be a perfect opportunity for cover crop just because you're going to have a bigger window that you can get that crop established yeah then you're not leaving that soil barren you're going to get some major benefits from that cover crop right yep the problem with corn on corn that scares me is we're going to be dealing with volunteer mess pretty bad and so do you do corn on corn and try to recapture that nutrient do you just have soybeans that are you know full buffet but try to control that um corn on corn right you're gonna have two to three year impact on this because how do you balance out your rotation right guys that we're corn on corn and there's two to three years to get back to normal after this can you guys touch on you were talking earlier about how many acres this storm impacted can you mention some of that because i think a lot of the people watching probably don't realize how massive this storm was and what got affected here so the storm was a 90 mile ban from north to south and it traveled 780 miles in distance overall the hardest hit area was kind of you're in the wind tunnel and they're saying that corn and affected by that storm nationwide was 37.7 million over 37 million acres of corn that was affected by the storm now iowa alone there the numbers that i heard for iowa were right around 14 million crop acres just over half of that was corn and if you want to talk severely damaged they're saying 3.5 are severely damaged which i would say this is in that 3.5 million the rest of it is going to be stuff that has some degree of lodging but you're talking about a yield loss on 14 million iowa acres of crop so that's that's a pretty big swath that's about a third of the state i think soybeans got a better chance to weather the storm not to use a bad cliche there but um they're still in that pod fill stage um i think they needed a little bit of rain and that might have helped i've never seen soybeans lay as flat as they did last monday but they've kind of popped back up they look like they've come back up pretty well and yeah and part of that's just the nature of the beast i mean those soybean plants i mean they're still doing vegetative growth right well is putting pods on yep so i mean my beans were probably six or our beans were probably six inches tall and now i mean i'd say they're back up just underneath my my waist which is about as tall as a lot of the corn fields more than my weight you can say you can say it the thing that worries about beans is when we're combining we're going to be careful because there's a lot of debris there is there is yeah tin there is two by fours there's whole grain bins that have blown out into these bean fields and but i i do think the beans we could almost use another rain for the beans yeah i'd agree and the last one probably didn't soak in real well huh not real well no no anything that fell here ended up in illinois if you guys want an example of how crazy this storm was and an example of who farmers are when i got here one of the first questions i heard was one of them asked hey anybody know whose grain bin that is out in the middle of tweets field that's that's that's how it goes that's a 20 20 question right there that is a 20 20 question summed up into one yeah that's crazy by the way tweet is a norwegian name around here so just so you know aren't they all norwegian names around they're not irish in the neighborhood a little bit irish non-swedish around here man i want to take a second here and talk for for just a minute on crop insurance because i know there's going to be a lot of people who mention the crop insurance side of this and how everything's going to be just fine crop insurance when it comes to wind and hail is a completely separate thing from federal crop insurance now federal crop insurance works off of a yield and a price calculation that it comes to and then you pay to cover yourself at a certain yield in price and you typically get like in our area a lot of the times we will be at 75 to 80 percent guarantee of that calculation down here they might be up a little higher 80 85 percent of how that calculation works out talking with the last farmer the way they were figuring their calculations it sounds like uh they're expecting to be short on their on their corn acres that that federal crop insurance guarantee is going to be roughly 60 short per acre uh than than what they calculate their break-even price at so even with crop insurance kicking in they're still going to be 60 per acre short on on on making a profit check out this field right here look at that i mean you could you you could absolutely watch a dog walk across that entire field and it wouldn't be easy for him to walk across that it's crazy look at that it's not turning brown like it's dead yo this well this stuff hasn't if you look it hasn't broke off no it's still in here so those plants are technically going to probably still try to finish off but and there are some fields that you get to and where they have either crimped and they look like that yep they're still going to probably try but they're not going to be able to get all the nutrients through and there's some of them that are just clean broke off at about a football this is crazy i mean you can look you can look as far as you can see and you could if you wanted to you could count the plants that are standing yeah you can see the rabbit chasing the snake you could four bin pads sitting back there four grain bins lost and cleaned up in the last week just at one site right there there's a shed with some of a roof and no walls more grain bins missing their top and i actually saw a trail coming through the soybean field where i'm guessing a grain bin rolled across i was right it's pretty obvious i can't get it on camera but a grain bin from that farm went across the bean field to the neighbors field and continued on for a mile or two by the looks of it man look at that look at the size of those bins completely destroyed unbelievable was there two here that are now gone it would have been three total so and they're all three obviously done for and uh looks like they were given to the neighbors so they're gonna have to watch for steel when they're harvesting i think that some jenna turned on their generators and it back fed into the town into the town so the city went a week without power that's nuts yeah like our farm our personal farm in anken ages got power back yesterday last night last night about 11. and but there's still some people like you get up by marshalltown i don't think there's a lot of people up there that have power there's still some rural people around here that don't have power and we've been talking with the energy company and they're out of transformers and so they said it could be another seven days for some of those people to get power that's crazy so if you guys look at this pile i mean one of the first things that i think about when i see this pile yes man i hope nobody was in there you suppose that's the guy that was in the blue hut on to the next i am gonna try to beat this sun that's going down in a hurry to get to the next place because i hear it's uh very visual this is luther iowa now had to come here some of the damage i saw on the way here was considerably worse than anything else i'd seen yet to this point look at that that is unbelievable right there that's insane the amount of force that it's got to take to move those monsters like that and just smash them into the ones behind them it's going to be really interesting around here come harvest time here in six weeks or so with as many bushels of storage short as they are you know what happens now they you can't store it here and multiple co-ops are like this my understanding is dozens and the and the private storage is the same way i saw a bin on the way here standing up right in the middle of the field looked like it must have tipped over rolled out there and stood back up and the corn from here to slater i just went 15 miles is you can almost count the stocks that are standing this is i mean it only got worse coming this way and i hear going down highway 30 to the east is gonna continue to be just as bad or get worse yet and so i'm out of daylight i'm gonna go visit one more guy i might have to come back through here on my way home on in a couple of days here it's obviously gotten pretty dark now so i'm gonna actually finish this video on my way home in a couple of days here but before i quit for the night i got one more stop that i need to make so there's a good creepy good creepy close-up look at that okay look at that it gets even creepier over here i look better zoomed in we completely forgot to record our entire encounter here we've been talking for like three hours zach's been learning a lot of stuff he even learned how to run his camera better well we didn't really figure it out but it does have a zoom twisty thing but in my defense i've only been using this camera for a couple of years he learned the zoom twisty thing is when you move your arm in and out or turn the camera that works too that was uncomfortable speaking of uncomfortable thank you guys for dinner it was extremely delicious wait why is that speaking of uncomfortable you were you were here for the last couple hours all right thank you guys thanks for coming see ya you didn't even say happy birthday yeah i did earlier it wasn't his birthday it probably is now not quite yet still got six minutes that's six minutes chill out i'll call you yeah see you later see you guys those guys were weird

Channel: Millennial Farmer

Views: 805,753

Rating: 4.9529247 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: qAkr3ion2zI

Length: 29min 17sec (1757 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 21 2020