Last year corn was even better with opportunities to contract corn at $7-plus per bushel.
Looking at peanuts, Davis said it will be all about growers maintaining their crop-rotation schedules.
“Peanut acres may grab some cotton acreage based on the better profit potential,” Davis said.
About 8,900 acres of peanuts were planted last year, which was slightly more than 2021.
“With cotton being in the dumps, there is not much impetus for peanut prices to move upward,” Davis said.
For Calhoun County farmers not growing peanuts, soybean prices close to $14 for the September contract could attract more to grow the crop, Davis said.
“Soybeans have the lowest production costs compared to other commodities,” Davis said.
Soybeans continue to be a minor crop in Calhoun County, with only 3,100 acres planted in 2022, nearly identical to 2021.
Cameron farmer Drake Perrow will plant 350 acres of corn, 1,200 acres of cotton and 1,000 acres of peanuts.
“”We went up on the corn a little bit,” Perrow said. “Cotton prices are terrible. That’s why I think acres-wise in the state, we’ll be down probably 15%.”
Other crops will remain stable, Perrow said.
Perrow said the top goal, as every year, is to make a profit.
“Last year things just went ballistic, and they haven’t come down much,” Perrow said. “So you just don’t have a whole lot of room for error. So if you have any bad weather, it’s a scary situation, it really is.”
“You’ve got to make a yield,” Perrow said. “That’s number one. If you don’t make a yield, it doesn’t matter if the price is high as it can be. So you’ve got to make a good crop.”
Input costs including fertilizer, pesticides, seeds, weaned animals, feed and any other production input remain high.
“It’ll take $650 to $700 an acre to grow cotton this year,” he said. “A brand new cotton picker today is $1 million and it runs six weeks, and that’s it, but you got to have it. And all the equipment has gone up. Finding parts is still a major, major concern.”
Outside of the cost of farming, there is always the wild card of Mother Nature.
“We do have a good bit of irrigation, but that’s still not a guarantee,” Perrow said. “I mean, if you really have a real drought, you can’t keep up watering. And it’s expensive to irrigate, too. That’s a big cost.”
Addressing these challenges with Mother Nature and prices in many ways is beyond control.
“It all boils down to whether we’re just going to have a good year,” Perrow said. “If you don’t make a crop, I don’t care if it’s $1 a pound, if you don’t have any to sell,” he said, it’s not going to make any difference.
Perrow said it will take at least 90 cents on two-bale crop to break even. He estimates it will take two tons of peanuts at about $575 a ton (to break even).
Perrow said another risky proposition is dryland corn.
“You’ve got a 10-day period in there when this corn is pollinating, that if you hot and dry and that corn is not pollinating, you can get all the rain you want after that,” it’s not going to make a difference,” he said, noting that while corn looks good on paper, there is not guarantee for a good yield.
Perrow said while soybeans are pretty easy to grow, they are not a good rotation crop with peanuts.
“You cannot plant peanuts behind soybeans due to just diseases and that sort of thing,” he said.
Outside of commodity prices and input costs, there are other issues facing farmers this year.
Rast said one is the creation of a new farm bill.
“We’re in the process now of deciding how they want to write that and what changes they’re going to make,” Rast said, noting there is a big question about how it will be written because there are about 200 new members of the U.S. House who may or may not know much about agriculture and the farm bill.
“We’re actively interested in that, and we’re watching what they’re doing in Washington and trying to educate those guys so they’ll know how the safe food and fiber policy needs to be put in place for the U.S.”
Every five years, the farm bill expires and is updated: it goes through an extensive process in which it is proposed, debated and passed by Congress and is then signed into law by the president.
The farm bill is a package of legislation that has an impact on how food is grown and what kinds of foods are grown.
The bill covers programs ranging from crop insurance for farmers to healthy food access for low-income families, from beginning farmer training to support for sustainable farming practices.
Rast explained there is a lot of confusion from the general public about farming economics.
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, damn, farmers get a subsidy on this, or they get help on this,'” Rast said.
Rast explained that the safe food and fiber policy stabilizes the market and keeps farmers in business. He said it also keeps food prices down for the consumer.
“You think eggs are high now?” Rast said. “Let them quit with that policy.”
“This safe food and fiber policy is for us to be independent on our food source,” Rast said. “The minute we get dependent on China and South America and Europe for our food, we’re lost. We’re going to be at their mercy at that point just like we are with fuel. So that’s why a safe food and fiber policy is so important.”
Another issue facing farmers is labor supply, Rast said.
He said finding good, qualified, educated and trained individuals to “handle something like a $400,000 tractor” requires knowledge of GPS technology.
“You’ve got to have enough training and enough experience to be able to run those kinds of things,” he said. “Everything we do is that way now on the farm. So we have to have qualified labor. And we’ve got to have labor that’s willing to stick with us because after you train them, you can’t lose them.”
How does he address the challenge?
“Well, farming needs to profitable enough so we can pay them a good wage,” Rast said. “We gotta compete with the rest of the industrial world.”
He also said farmers are competing with the government.
“They’re paying them to sit home,” Rast said. “You got a job, I got a job, but there’s a bunch of people out there that’s getting a check that ain’t got a job that need to be working, and we can’t access them. They don’t have any motivation because the government’s ruining that motivation.”
Davis said global events can also impact farmers.
“World events such as the Ukraine/Russia conflict and the China/Taiwan issue affect global markets on both the supply-and-demand side,” Davis said. “Much of this is already registered in the market, but as these issues drag on, major events around these issues may have some negative effects.”
“Prices of inputs and commodities will fluctuate during the season around these issues and though not something farmers are specifically concerned with there is a background effect that is not obvious,” he continued. “Farmers make decisions based on profitability and try to lock in profitable prices and input costs in advance of the planting season in order to hedge against these fluctuations.”
While farming can be complicated, Rast said in many ways it is simple: “We depend on the Lord’s support every day not just riding around, but in agriculture, as well. That’s the miracle of that.”
For Perrow it is a love of the land that keeps him going.
“If you don’t love it, you’re not going to do it well. You’ve got to wake up in the morning ready to go to work,” Perrow said.
Source : The TImes and Democrat