Making a living as a farmer has never been easy, but faced with a multiyear slump in commodity prices, a growing number are getting out of the business.“
We’re a very proud group of people... farmers and ranchers,”
“It hurts your heart to hear or to know of people who are giving up,” Karnes County farmer and rancher Zack Yanta tells Newsradio 1200 WOAI.
According to the latest census numbers, there are about 2.1 million farms in America. That’s down 4.3 percent from 2007, and experts think that number could soon drop under two million.
If it does, it will be the first time it’s hit that number since the Louisiana Purchase, which was in 1803.
What’s driving the trend? Yanta blames a combination of commodity prices and a rise in other costs, like fuel, seeds, fertilizer and equipment.
“It’s always been a low margin business,” he explains. “You can only cut so much, and then when the prices don’t help out, you can only do so much.
When his father was a farmer in 1947, a bushel of corn sold for $3.00. Today, he says it sells for $3.60.
The Agriculture Department estimates that farmers’ incomes will drop 9% in 2017. That’ll mark the fourth year of the current slide.
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