SDSA Director Nigg Knows Soybean Production, Transportation

Delayed planting affected the growing season and harvest for many South Dakota soybean farmers, including Dan Nigg of Sisseton. It also resulted in a lucrative year for an elevator cooperative, on which Nigg serves as a board member. Nigg, a director on the South Dakota Soybean Association board, says the harvest was so-so.

“It was alright,” said Nigg, responding to a question about the harvest during an interview with the South Dakota Soybean Network. “We had a difficult spring. We started planting soybeans the 28^th of April and we never finished until probably the 20^th of June. Usually in ten days, [planting is] all over, and it took a long time this spring. We’d get some planted, get rained out, get some planted; it’s been a challenging year for the crops.”

Because planting took almost two months, extending well into the summer, Nigg noticed significant yield and quality swings during harvest.

“The early-planted [soybeans] were very good, I mean we got in and we thought, ‘boy, this is going to be a great year,’ and the beans were normal to above normal,” he said. “And then as time went on, a lot of it depended on how much drown-out was in the field from the wet summer. Yeah, the beans, as you went on, they weren’t quite as good as the first ones.”

A position on the board of his local elevator has given Nigg a unique perspective of railroad car space as a salable commodity and what it takes to get soybeans to export points, such as the Pacific Northwest.

“Our local elevator books their freight anywhere from 12 to 18 months ahead of time so they have trains coming regularly. And with our crop being a little down this year, they were actually selling a few trains because we didn’t need the transportation,” said Nigg. “So, they’d put those [surplus rail cars] on the market and sell them.”

There was a lot of prevented planting around Nigg this year, which cut into total soybean production for the area while resulting in what Nigg calls a pretty good year for shipping. The cooperative for which he serves as a board member encompasses several elevators that book their transportation as a unit.