Friday, August 13, 1999
Drought, glut squeeze farmers
BY HANG NGUYEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Nature and the stingy commodities market may finally have forced Jay Butterfield to do the unthinkable: Consider finding a part-time job to supplement his farming income.
“This is worse than the Depression,” said the 50-year-old farmer from Ross Township in Butler County. “Everything we buy is high. Everything we sell is cheap.”
While farmers' fields parch throughout most of Ohio and Kentucky — as in most of the East — much of the U.S. heartland has had sufficient rain, and that means bumper crops and little help for depressed commodity prices.
This year's soybean crop is shaping up to be the biggest on record, and the corn harvest would be the third-largest, the Agriculture Department (USDA) reported Thursday. Big crops of cotton and rice are expected across the South.
Because of tighter world supplies and improved exports, USDA expects a modest increase in prices for some commodities — 20 cents a bushel for soybeans and 5 cents a bushel for corn — from what was forecast a month ago.
The prosperity of a booming U.S. economy has by passed large parts of rural America, now facing a financial crisis not seen since the 1980s.
In the past, farmers who lost money on one crop could usually shift to another with better prices. What's unusual this year is that, for many farmers, that is not possible because prices for so many crops are so bad.
The drought is most acute in the Northeast. But Tristate counties have also been hit hard by the lack of rain.
Average crop yields in Hamilton, Butler, Clermont, Warren and Brown counties are predicted to be less than half what farmers reap in a typical year, said Steve Maurer, executive director of the Ohio Farm Service Agency, an arm of the USDA.
Donna Kluba, 49, of Batavia Township in Clermont County, said all her crops — tobacco, hay and soybeans — have been heavily affected.
“(The hay) gets no height,” she said. “It gets no bulk. It just gets brown, and you can't do anything with it.”
Mr. Butterfield is praying that his soybean crops will get a good soaking by the end of next week.
“If we don't get any rain next week, it will spell disaster for our soybeans,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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