No ‘down time’ for farmers

By GARY BROCK

gbrock@recordherald.com

“So,” peo­ple who don’t know what the life of a farmer is really like may ask, “what do farm­ers do dur­ing the win­ter between fall har­vest and spring plant­ing? Long vaca­tion? Win­ter job? Catch up on TV?”

The truth, of course, is that the life of a farmer doesn’t end after har­vest and start again in the weeks before spring plant­ing. A farmer’s life is 365 days a year.

It is true that the win­ter months are dif­fer­ent. But that is all. Just… different.

Any farmer will tell you that from the time they fin­ish the fall har­vest until the day they begin to pre­pare the fields for plant­ing in early spring they are work­ing on some farm-related project.

Maybe they are check­ing out new seeds, decid­ing what seeds will be best for the next sea­son and what new hybrids are ready for the ground. Then they must place their seed orders. And they had bet­ter not wait until any­where near the last minute or they might be out of luck. And they must order their fer­til­izer for the next year.

Then there is all the farm equipment.

Once har­vest is done, the trac­tors, com­bines and other equip­ment isn’t just dri­ven into a barn to sit for three or four months.

Win­ter is the time to do repairs on the trucks and trac­tors and equip­ment. It is time to order and install replace­ment parts. It is time to refur­bish every­thing and “win­ter­ize” all of that expen­sive farm equip­ment. And all that ten­der lov­ing care takes lots of time.

So the win­ter months may be as busy as any other time of the year for farmers.

COSTLY FARM BILL DELAY?

Speak­ing of win­ter issues, the fail­ure to pass the expired fed­eral Farm Bill may be cost­ing to not only farm­ers but Amer­i­can con­sumers as well.

The Tampa Bay Tri­bune recently reported that milk prices per gal­lon could sky­rocket if a new bill isn’t approved this winter.

When the Farm Bill expired Sept. 30, so did the Milk Income Loss Con­tract pro­gram. It was a safety net pro­vid­ing pay­ments when national milk prices drop in con­trast to feed costs. When the new farm bill did not pass this year, and the old one expired, the MILC pro­gram halted and was not replaced.

And the paper reported that this will impact dairy farm­ers across the nation.

The Tri­bune reports that with­out a farm bill by the end of this year, an old per­ma­nent law would take effect. The Con­gres­sional Research Ser­vice says the gov­ern­ment would be man dated to set crop and milk prices at “par­ity” — the pur­chas­ing power of those crops in 1910–1914, when, accord­ing to a 1930s study, a farmer’s earn­ing power and pur­chas­ing power were equal.

MILC, and other dairy sup­port pro­grams, have pre­vented impo­si­tion of par­ity. But it could be imposed in 2013 if a new farm bill isn’t passed.

U.S. Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack said that could raise the price of milk in stores to $6 a gal­lon. Here in south­ern Ohio it is about $3 a gal­lon aver­age. The prices of milk, cheese and but­ter are all on the increase.

So let’s hope that after the elec­tion, Con­gress will return for a “lame duck” ses­sion and include in it’s pri­or­i­ties pas­sage of a new fed­eral Farm Bill. Par­ti­san con­cerns stalled it this fall. Let’s hope that will be put aside after the Novem­ber election.

(Gary Brock is Edi­tor of ACRES of South­west Ohio.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Dec 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.