Farming has never been what anyone would call an easy way to make a living. A lawyer can look out his office window and nonchalantly sip coffee while the sun beats down and temps soar, but a farmer might lose a crop under the same circumstances.
Today’s hardships for farmers go far beyond rain, wind and hail, although weather has been and will always be a factor. A recent article from the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture said, in short, expenses are up, potential revenues are down and if one needed a little seasoning with that drab forecast, there are always the roiled markets in the world that can affect trade.
On the revenue side, commodity prices are down where they were six or seven years ago. So if a crop can be brought in, sometimes the selling price doesn’t cover what it costs to harvest it. And “input costs” — those items that are needed to put in a crop like seed, fertilizer, pest management tools and diesel — are all up, and if they go down, it’s not for long or by much.
The end result has been a “skyrocketing” of farm bankruptcies, as the situation has been described.
“We’ve had 259 filings in the United States so far,” said Ryan Loy, extension economist with the Division of Agriculture. “And that’s just through the first quarter of the year. We’ve already beat last year in terms of national filings.”
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Loy said when the problems are happening across the country “it’s a clear sign that financial pressures that we saw before in 2018 and (2019) are kind of re-emerging.”
We caught a young farmer on a recent television news broadcast saying he didn’t have the wherewithal to file for bankruptcy because he didn’t have many assets to start with. He also wondered aloud the sense in working hard all year long not just to break even but to owe money at the end of it all.
The pain also extends beyond the farm family. When farmers are pinched, they understandably hold back on big-ticket purchases. Consequently, sales of farm equipment are down.
Arkansas agriculture contributes $16 billion to the state’s economy, making it the largest industry in the state. The fact that farmers now and in recent years are failing at such high levels should get everyone’s attention. This year’s problems are similar to last year’s problems, meaning the issues affecting farmers don’t appear to be a blip but an ongoing problem. Farmers are the backbone of the nation. The time to act is now.