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of the Stover family have kept raising it.
• "We've always had it," said Robert Stover, 59.
• When Bob Finken was growing up in western North Dakota, he never thought about raising corn. The crop just wasn't viable there.
• Now it is. This spring, for the first time, the 53-year-old Finken, a Douglas, N.D., farmer, will be planting corn.
• "It's time to try it," he said.
• Corn -- old and familiar to some Upper Midwest farmers, new and a bit exotic to others -- is shining brightly this spring. Prices are strong, and ever-improving varieties allow the crop to be raised in formerly unsuitable areas.
• More farmers are growing it for the first time. Many long-time corn producers are raising more of the crop than ever before.
• Typically, the gain in corn acres is coming from fields that otherwise would have been planted to wheat or soybeans. Wheat, corn and soybeans are the region's three major crops.
(Continued on page 26)
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