Projections of yield losses and economic costs following deep wheel‐traffic compaction during the 2019 harvest

• Main Authors: Aaron Lee M. Daigh, Jodi DeJong‐Hughes, Umesh Acharya
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2020-01-01
• Series: Agricultural & Environmental Letters
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1002/ael2.20013

Abstract Economic projections after widespread deep compaction during wet harvests are essentially nonexistent. Therefore, we project state‐level economic costs to producers in North Dakota and Minnesota for the upcoming 2020 and 2021 crops. We provide economic cost graphs as functions of grain sell prices and fractions of land impacted by deep wheel‐traffic compaction. At corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] sell prices of US$3.06 bu−1 and $8.78 bu−1 for North Dakota and $3.26 bu−1 and $8.98 bu−1 for Minnesota, we estimate a minimum economic cost of US$587 million through 2021, excluding environmental externalities and other feedbacks, for every 10% of lands compacted during the 2019 harvest. Actual impacted land area may range up to 30%, resulting in a range of US$0 to $1.76 billion of actual costs. Precise large‐scale, deep‐compaction reports/sensing is needed to determine actual fractions of impacted land. Policies incentivizing conservation practices to reduce the occurrence of field traffic on wet soils are strongly encouraged.