Posted on 08/15/2016 10:55:44 AM PDT by Lorianne
Minnesota's crop, livestock and dairy farmers are suffering with continuing rock bottom prices for their commodities, driving some into bankruptcy.
John Quaal, 71, operates a dairy farm near Fergus Falls and tells Minnesota Public Radio News (http://bit.ly/2b5RcoD ) that it's nearly impossible to break even producing milk.
"For almost two years now we've been going backwards," said Quaal. "You've got to learn to deal with it I guess. It's just the way it is."
Quaal said his farm has lost as much as $40,000 in a single month and figures the family operation lost a total of $300,000 last year.
"It's pretty hard to go to any bank, or anywhere and borrow money with a negative cash flow," said Quaal. "So it looked like about the route we should probably go is filing a Chapter 12 bankruptcy."
His family will continue to milk nearly 300 cows, but have more time to pay off debt.
Quaal turned to Bill Januszewski, a farm business management instructor at Alexandria Technical and Community College, for financial advice. Januszewski is currently working with a total of 21 conventional dairy farms in the area.
"Out of the 21 I have about 12 of them that are under some sort of stress," said Januszewski. "And I would say out of those 12 I've got five that are under considerable stress."
The number of troubled agricultural loans is rising statewide and the number of farmers offered mediation by lenders is up 20 percent so far this year.
Farmers that have managed to stay in business are drawing on savings to pay their bills, said Sterling Liddell with Rabo AgriFinance, which provides financial services for agricultural producers and agribusiness in the U.S.
Liddell says that savings likely came from a run of historically high corn and soybeans profits between 2007 and 2014. With another record harvest expected this year, prices will likely stay low, he said.
I wonder why Mainichi Shimbun is interested in this...
Oh boo hoo. Low prices? Not in the grocery stores. Oh a bad year when farmers are one of the riches groups in America. No sympathy.
Farm conglomerates are; family farms aren’t.
Translation: I need more govt subsidies so I can drive an $80,000 loaded suv with tax exempt farm tags.
Sorry, I have my really small violin here somewhere...I just have a hard time finding it. Does the article mention the size of the milk subsidy the dairy farmer gets?
Farmers complaining. Nothing new.
Perhaps if he took up another profession say network news anchor, he could really make farming work. Peter Jennings did real well...
You can make money as a dairy farmer with a few minor steps:
1) Inherit the land and equipment without any debt.
2) Have a full time job off the farm
3) Have a spouse with a full time job off the farm.
Live on the spouses income, and use your income to subsidize the operation, and you should be able to have a positive income each year.
I don’t know. I know a family in Maryland who has 280 acres and they are rich! Definitely 1 percent. Don’t let the overalls fool you.
It’s been 30+ years since Willie Nelson sang at a Farm Aid benefit back in 1985 and people are still going into the farming business.
A few thoughts:
1) The milk business is heavily regulated and very political. The milk farmers did not benefit from high grain and hay prices, they had to buy at those high prices.
2) 300 cows would still be a family operation.
3) solution would be big farming and big government
4) why in a Japanese paper? looking for investors?
5) At one time it was important to have a 3 years reserve of grain. this created a lot of STABILITY but lower prices. Today, if we don’t use the LAST BUSHEL the same day the new crop comes in we screwed up.
Do you understand how tentative your food supply is compared to 20 years back?
Maybe they could switch over to having government wild horses like the Food Network’s multi-millionaire Ree Drummond who’s about as far away from being a “Pioneer Woman” as you can get with their BLM contract. Sure, they inherited a lot but they’ve also received millions from the taxpayers.
Thirty years of Farm-Aid.....where has all the money gone?
>Farm conglomerates are; family farms aren’t.
Neither ‘deserving’ of having our pockets picked.
Free Market and let the market decide how profitable and/or price point.
Course, nanny govt will have to get out of the way...as usual.
The BLM wild horse/burro thing is a huge scam. They under cut horse breeders and have tanked the horse market. They pay people to keep these animals and have very little oversight.
What do they grow? Luxury high-rises?
Sounds like a classical imbalance of supply and demand being corrected by market forces — in spite of a staggering amount of federal support and market-meddling.
If you aren’t an efficient low-cost producer, you deserve to go out of business. That’s just the way it is.
Don’t waste your time trying to talk to people who don’t know how farming works. You’ll get nothing but scorn and hatred. See the replies above.
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