North Dakota activates Harvest Hotline

Jul 27, 2022

The hotline was first implemented in 1992 to address custom combining needs

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

The North Dakota government has activated a phone number to match farmers who require custom combining services with combine owners looking for work.

North Dakotans who fit into either category can call the Harvest Hotline at 701-425-8454.

“Your name and information will be entered into the Harvest Hotline database to be matched up with other callers,” State Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring said in a statement. “Both farmers and harvesters are already utilizing the service.”

The free hotline is available weekdays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Callers can also leave messages on weekends.

The hotline was first implemented during the harvest of 1992 and has been an annual service since.

That year, adverse weather caused the demand for custom combining services to increase.

Farmers and combiners can also view the Harvest Hotline map.

The map features icons of combines.

Clicking on those icons will bring up equipment and contact information about custom combiners in the area.

Elsewhere in the U.S., the developers of an app designed to connect farmers with other producers looking for help, celebrated the app’s one year anniversary.

Three Iowa women created Farmmee in 2021.

Since then, more than 1,000 people have downloaded the app.

“There are gaps in farming communities when it comes to connecting farmers with farmers,” said Molly Woodruff an Iowa farmer and Farmmee’s CEO, the Kiowa County Signal reported. “Farmers consistently tell us their biggest need, or gap, is when their equipment breaks down or when they need extra equipment quickly. It is hard to find experienced help, especially when they’re working with tight timelines.

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”