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Having already faced a cool growing season, wet conditions, high moisture crop and numerous harvest delays, corn farmers across the state and the Midwest now have another hurdle to overcome: A tight supply of propane, which is used in agricultural dryers to dry crops.

"Supply is real tight right now and it will probably remain that way for a while," said Mike Rud, president of the North Dakota Propane and Gas Association. "There are seven states that are all chopping corn at the same time and trying to dry it. There's no propane to push into the pipe because it can't be made fast enough to get it in line."

At a propane terminal in Carrington, Rud said they are currently receiving 20 loads - approximately 200,000 gallons - of propane each day, down from 60 to 100 loads per day typically.

"Southeast North Dakota, where most of the corn is grown, farmers there are going through 80,000 to 100,000 gallons per day trying to get it off," Rud added.

According to the November federal crop production report, North Dakota growers will be trying to dry down an estimated 212 million bushels of corn - a majority of which has moisture levels above 30 percentwhich need to be dried to around 23 percent moisture in order to be stored or sold to ethanol refineries.

Ken Hellevang, an ag and biosystems engineer at the North Dakota State University, said a farmer could go through 200 gallons of propane to dry down 100 bushels of corn from 25 percent moisture to 15 percent moisture.

With an estimated average yield of 121 bushels per acre and more than 1.75 million acres to be harvested in North Dakota, those hundreds of gallons quickly turn into hundreds of thousands of gallons.

Although propane is available from smaller plants in towns like Tioga, Killdeer and Mandan, most of the propane farmers in the Northern Plains use comes from Canada via the Cochin Line, owned by Kidder Morgan.

"I haven't heard of a lot of (shortage) reports up here, except a few elevators said they were having trouble," Hellevang said. "But two or three weeks ago I started hearing reports in Iowa about the difficulties of finding available propane."

A majority of the 2009 record-yield, 12.9 billion- bushel corn crop is grown in the Great Plains and Ohio Valley. A majority of those corn farmers, Rud said, get their propane from the Midwest's main supply mecca in Conway, Kan., which has also seen shortages.

Because of the propane shortage there, Rud said truckers have been seen waiting in lines for hours or have been forced to travel greater distances to get propane, causing supply disruptions elsewhere.

Describing the current propane shortage, he said, "It's like having a 72-ounce pop. If you have one straw you're fine but if there's seven or eight straws, it gets gone fast."

According to the federal Energy Information Administration, wholesale propane is currently $1.24 per gallon, up from 96 cents in October. Aside from seasonal fluctuations, Rud said so far propane prices have not skyrocketed because of the supply/demand issue but a number of factors could change that.

"We're going to continue to monitor things but the cold weather is going to be the kicker," Rud said. "When it hits, guys are going to have to decide whether it goes for their residence or the heaters."