REGENT - On a hot July night, corn grows so fast that it makes a sound like broom straws rubbing together.

At the moment, corn sounds like "cha-ching," or money dropping into a slot.

Who wouldn't want to get in the game, in hopes corn rolls up all three times and money pours out like silver dollars from a hot slot in Las Vegas?

A farmer in southwestern North Dakota has better odds planting corn than he would feeding a machine at a casino. Everyone knows what stays in Vegas is money. A corn crop succeeds about 50 percent of the time.

But both are a gamble and no one will cover the loss in either case.

No question, corn is suddenly one hot commodity. It rivals wheat in price, and a good corn crop will yield twice the number of bushels an acre, or more.

When corn gets $3.85 a bushel, like it does at Red Trail Energy's ethanol plant at Richardton, producers start paying attention.

They start paying a lot of attention, especially when Red Trail's corn buyer, Keith Finney, said the plant plans to buy 1 million bushels a month out of the local corn market in October, November and December.

Farmers start looking out at their fields in terms of possibilities.

They showed up by the dozens at meetings in Washburn, Regent and Taylor last week, held by the North Dakota State University extension office to talk about dry land corn techniques.

"Dry land" means land that is not irrigated, as corn ideally is in these parts, and it also means growing corn in semi-arid conditions.

Some years, southwestern North Dakota doesn't get much more moisture than an Arizona desert.

In normal years, it rains just enough to grow corn, in the range of 12 to 14 inches.

Wheat, on the other hand, can do well at half that amount of rain, if it comes at the right time.

These are decisions farmers make on cold February nights. The risk factor is chilling, too.

James Johnson, a young Mott area farmer, went to a corn meeting at Regent to learn what he could.

The way the math works now, a good corn crop would command a better price than anything else going, Johnson figures.

That is, if it rains, which it didn't much last year.

Johnson, like the others, learned that early weed control is critical to preserve moisture. No-till farming is a no-brainer for corn. Wide rows and even skipped rows give the deep corn root system more subsoil moisture, which in a touch-and-go year could make all the difference.

Another "if" for Johnson is whether or not he can get good insurance on other crops to ease cash flow in the event of another dry year.

There is not a county west of the Missouri River where a corn grain crop can be insured under the government's multi-peril crop insurance program without a special agreement from the feds.

A farmer in one of those counties can get a written agreement only if he has a contract to sell the corn, or if he has a three-year production record, said Perry Finck, agent for the Commercial Insurance Agency of Mott.

Even then, insurance costs from $17 to $30 an acre on corn. Wheat insurance is in the range of $6 an acre.

Finck said one option is to insure a corn crop for silage - a nutritious, if malodorous, feed for cattle.

James Kilzer, of rural Bentley, said he came to the Regent meeting because they're always looking to make better money on their operation, a crop and cattle mix.

"The price is lucrative," he said. "A failed crop is feed for cows, but it would be nice to sell it to Red Trail."

Despite the risk, Ag Alliance Cooperative of Hettinger, Regent and New England sold out its preferred corn seed varieties early on.

"Nobody grew corn seed in abundance," Ag Alliance's Shane Timm said.

Timm said farmers in his area are buying herbicide resistant seed, Roundup Ready varieties that mature in 85 to 90 days.

He thinks corn seed genetics will only get better for dry land farmers.

Eric Eriksmoen, an agronomist, has been researching corn varieties for years at the Hettinger research station.

He doesn't foresee a lot of new corn acres this year, because there's virtually no stored soil moisture after four dry years.

Given the expense of insurance and dry soil going in, he said he wouldn't even recommend corn this year.

Ten years, though, could make a world of difference.

By then, seed genetics will have improved for this region in response to demand.

Research will develop corn that matures faster and has drought-resistant characteristics, such as starch clusters in the root system that draw moisture like a sugar bowl in a humid kitchen.

"The traits are coming, and it's happening so quickly," Eriksmoen said.

Joel Ransom, an NDSU agronomist, said the extension service offered the workshops because of the growing interest in corn production.

Red Trail Energy is online and yet another ethanol plant - Blue Flint, at Underwood - will go online soon.

Between the two, they'll create a market for 36 million bushels of corn each year to produce a combined 100 million gallons of ethanol.

Ransom said the experts didn't show up at the local meetings to discourage corn production. Instead, they came to provide the information they have and to make sure farmers understand the risk in growing corn in southwestern North Dakota.

"I hope those without experience go with caution," he said. "Corn is a remarkable plant. When it goes well, it goes really well."

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)