Governor Mike Rounds says a shortage of propane in South Dakota continues to be an emergency.

Today he issued an executive order to continue expedited deliveries of commercial agricultural propane. Propane is in high demand because farmers need it to dry crops.

The extremely wet conditions are causing the dryers at grain elevators to run overtime. Managers at the elevators are going through huge amounts of propane because they have to dry soybeans this year.

Usually, farmers may have to dry corn but because the fields are so wet this year soybeans are going through the dryers as well.

"It's extremely rare. We've got managers that have been location managers for 30 years that have never dried a soybean in their life. So, all of a sudden to come into this year and have to dry eighty percent of the soybeans was something we weren't used to."

The shortage of propane isn't the only problem. Dryers are now being monitored 24 hours a day because they are running nonstop and there's concern about small fires sparking which has already been reported in Redfield, Mellette and Bristol so far this year.

"It's the slowest harvest we've seen from a corn perspective in the history of the U.S. Tthe last time we had a harvest this late was in 1992 and we had about five percent more of the crop harvested last year than we do this year."