Minnesota farmers coping with summer's unusually heavy rains

(KMSP) - Wet and severe weather can be a challenge for many of us, but for farmers, it's creating a real mess.
Soggy conditions keep them out of the fields and it threatens their crops.

Out in Fairmont, Minnesota, what is supposed to be cornfields is completely submerged under water.
Throughout the south and central parts of the state, farmers are dealing with similar issues after all this rain.

In fact, there hasn't been this much rain pounding down on the Patsche's farm near Fairmont since the summer of 1993.

"I think we had more than 11 inches just in June,” said Wanda Patsche.

Wanda and her husband have run run their corn, soybean and hog farm CW Pork for 40 years.
And in all this time, this has been the wettest and wildest weather season yet.

“Honestly just this location in the state, it seems like it’s been raining every four to five days. I don’t know if we went without a week of rain all summer,” she said.

Now, several fields within their 1000-acre farm stands in jeopardy.

“You can go down the rabbit hole and constantly think about how terrible things are when you get this much rain, but it does no good,” Wanda said.

On top of all the drenched crops, the pork industry has also struggled lately.

“We are also dealing with the tariff situation, and that really has an impact on us. When you look at the tariff situation, it’s affecting soybean and it’s affecting hogs—we have two out of the three,” she said.

But Wanda Patsche said both mother nature and politics are out of her control; those are the risks that come with farming the land.

"We just do the best we can and hope and pray we have good weather from here on out,” she said.

Like most farmers, the Patsche’s do have insurance, and at some point that will kick in. But, the couple will not know the true financial loss until well after the harvest in the next coming weeks.