ORIENT, SOUTH DAKOTA — The sky had finally cleared after weeks of record-setting rain, and now farmer Ray Martinmaas was facing a time crunch.
He was out in his white Ford F-150 Raptor pickup, searching his family’s 15,000 acres for areas dry enough to plant corn in time to mature by fall harvest, passing places where new bodies of ruinous water glittered. He spotted his neighbor Mark Cotton, another farmer, and slowed his truck to talk.
“Still too wet?” Martinmaas asked.
“We’re spinning our wheels,” Cotton replied. “This trade thing is going to kill us.”
View the complete June 21 article by Annie Gowen on The Washington Post website here.