Did You Know??

by Sarah Brombaugh

Today's prices are driving farmers out of business. A bushel of soybeans on today's market (10/18/99), will reap $4.56 per bushel and a bushel of corn will bring in $1.73. These prices are well below the cost of production. In 1972, when we first started farming, prices were only a little below these. What occupation do you know of that still receives the same wages received in 1972?

Combines, (for those of you that don't know what this is...is the equipment used to harvest crops), cost over $120,000.00. New tractors can cost as much and sometimes even more than a combine.

How many products sold in the world today has someone else setting the price the producer receives for it? A farmer can not say I want $2.50 per bushel for corn, as that is what it cost me to raise it. Someone else sets a price, and there's nothing a farmer can do about it. Someone else controls their destiny. No matter how hard they work, someone else controls the life of a farmer.

Farming is not an easy job. Fighting the weather is a constant situation. Either it's too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, too windy, not windy enough. Every aspect of the weather affects farming. Fields can be destroyed by grasshoppers or red spider mites. Weeds can become out of control and drastically reduce yields.

Farming is a HUGE gamble and even if farmers work as hard as they can, are as honest as they can be, their lives are controlled by others. Their livelihood is in jeopardy constantly.

Farming is a 'labor of love' for most farmers. Why else would they be doing this for the prices they are getting in today's market?

Some day soon, it will be too late to save the Family Farm.

Wake up America!! The Family Farm is about to go. When this does happen, big corporations will ask whatever price they need for crops to make a profit. This, in turn, will increase your cost at the grocery store tremendously. By then it will be too late. The Family Farm will have disappeared forever.

This comes from the Ag Journal, Billings, Montana: "At a recent ceremony at the White House, Vice President and presidential candidate Al Gore let slip what many have long believed was his real intention as regards to U.S. agriculture.

"While presenting a national award to a Colorado FFA member, Gore asked the student what his/her life plans were. Upon hearing that the FFA member wanted to continue on in production agriculture, Gore reportedly replied that the young person should develop other plans because our production agriculture is being shifted out of the U.S. to the Third World."

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Sarah Brombaugh