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Low corn prices and high fuel costs are combining to make life a little more difficult for farmers again this year.
"Prices last year weren't any better," Kosciusko County Extension educator Kelly Easterday said recently. "There's a lot of carryover from last year. ... How many years in a row can they have low crop prices until it puts a pinch on them?"
Corn prices are the worst, she said, with corn going for approximately $1.60 per bushel. "Under $2 is probably dirt cheap," she said.
Soybeans are a little better, she said, and closer to the $5 break-even point. Pork and beef prices are up this year, Easterday said, but dairy prices remain low.
"There's no hope of milk prices going up," she said, adding that cheese prices are the lowest since 1987, and milk prices are based on cheese prices.
Why are farmers getting so little for their crops? According to Fred Zolman, manager of Cromwell Grain, it's because there's a glut.
"When the drought scare ended at the end of May," he said, crops were already planted and it was too late to warn farmers of a possible glut.
Adding to the headache for farmers is the high fuel cost, which right now is affecting the drying process that takes place after harvest.
"Drying charges are higher because of increased costs for natural gas," Zolman said, estimating that gas is approximately 70 percent higher than this time last year.
Propane costs more than $1 per pound this year, compared to 65 to 70 cents last year, said Max Duncan, who farms 650 acres of corn and soybeans between Leesburg and Milford.
Of the difficult conditions for farmers, Duncan said, "Our prices are so much higher on seed and fertilizer, and grain prices are so low ... ."
He said this will be a hard year for all farmers. "It just is one of those things. The farmer has no say in the price his product sells for."
Duncan said he supplements his income with an auto repair business on his farm.
According to Zolman and Doug Smith, manager of Leesburg Elevator, harvest so far this fall has been better than expected.
Once those bountiful crops are harvested, expensively dried and ready for shipping, farmers will once again find increased costs.
"We ship a lot of our grain by railroad, and those tariffs went up this summer," Zolman said.
According to U.S. Census reports, Easterday said, approximately 70 percent of Kosciusko County is farmed. Out of a total of 344,000 acres, 210,000 acres, or about 61 percent of all the land in the county, are tillable cropland.
"Let's say we stay depressed in agriculture for another five years - that's pretty scary," Easterday said.
Still, Smith and Zolman were trying to stay positive and optimistic.
"We're in an area where there's a good economic base - there's not a lot of debt," Smith said. "It's not a doomsday."
Zolman said farm prices and weather conditions usually are cyclical. "The weather has a tremendous amount to do with yields," he said.
He remains optimistic that things will turn around for area farmers: "Hopefully, we'll see more competitive prices and that will put us on a more competitive basis with other countries."
