The public health crisis has turned into a financial crisis for local farmers.
Like other small business people, farmers are struggling to cope with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, and they say there are a few key factors that make the situation especially difficult for them.
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Click here to purchase photos from this gallery‘Everything is on a schedule’
Though more livestock grow to market weight everyday, many processing plants have shut down or are scaling back on operations, said Keegan Poe, a Franklin beef cattle farmer and owner of Poe Quality Meats.
Poe made reservations with his processor, Archer’s Meats of Greenwood, months ago, so he has a place in line when his next set of cattle is ready for market. But others are not so lucky, he said.
“Everything is on a schedule,” Poe said. “If you have a pin of pigs ready to go, you have more pigs coming a week out. But now, there is nowhere for them to go.”
Farmers are faced with new challenges. For livestock farmers, it’s keeping their animals from getting too fatty. Dairy farmers are dumping milk. And chicken farmers are cracking their eggs, Poe said.
In addition to worrying about his cattle, Poe faces uncertainty with the meat selling end of his businesses. Poe’s Quality Meats sells beef from Poe’s farm, lamb from this brother’s Johnson County farm, pork from a Shelby County processor and other locally sourced meats, he said.
Calls, texts, Facebook messages and emails flooded Poe’s phone starting about March 14, when the idea of a stay-at-home order was first introduced in Indiana. While local grocery stores sold out, Poe’s Quality Meats had both new clients and traditional buyers preparing to hunker down during the pandemic, he said.
Between the new customers and the large quantities of meat they requested, Poe’s numbers are off. Add to that uncertainly about when the state will reopen and business will return to normal, and he isn’t sure how much to stock for the coming weeks and months, he said.
“That’s been my frustration.” Poe said. “How do I handle inventory from now on? How many people were just trying to bridge the gap from the grocery store and how many will be return customers?”
‘Knife in the back’
With grain prices down drastically, corn and soybean farmers are wondering how much they should plant and if they can afford the loss from low selling prices, said Tracy Mabry, a Union Township farmer with 900 acres spread across Johnson, Morgan and Brown counties.
For Mabry, the situation is “like a knife in the back” right now, he said. Grain farmers are holding onto grain they otherwise might be selling and struggling to determine how much to plant with the idea that prices will still likely be low at harvest time, he said.
For farmers without other income, paychecks come once a year, not every two weeks. So low prices means that one and only paycheck for the year will be short, Mabry said.
After the rainy spring made yields lower than expected in 2019, farmers such as Mabry are depending on a good crop this year, he said.
“There will be some farmers who won’t [survive this] without the government stepping in,” Mabry said. “We are struggling right now because we aren’t eligible for the small business loans … We are self-employed, so we aren’t eligible for unemployment either.”
At Kokomo Grain Co.’s Edinburgh location, cash prices are at $3.03 per bushel for corn and $8.26 per bushel for soybeans for the month of April. With prices that low, farmers won’t make enough to cover seed, labor and equipment costs, Mabry said.
Farmers don’t like asking for help, but in this new reality, they may have to, he said.
“It is hard to put a stamp on what we need,” Mabry said. “Getting a fair price on what we grow would help more than anything.”
Some help is on the way. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday a $19 billion aid package “to provide critical support to our farmers and ranchers, maintain the integrity of our food supply chain, and ensure every American continues to receive and have access to the food they need,” according to a news release from the department. The package will provide direct aid to farmers, ranchers and food distributors who are impacted by COVID-19, the news release said.
‘Play it by ear and pray’
Greenhouse growers and farmers markets are off to a late state this year. But Gov. Eric Holcomb on Monday gave these businesses permission to open.
Taylor Farm Market in Whiteland was not impacted by forced business closures, but is preparing for a potential shake-up in the way they do business this year, said Jenny Taylor, who owns the business with her husband, Marc Taylor, and their in-laws.
They don’t plan to open until June when their early summer crops of strawberries and broccoli are ready. The whole Taylor family is hard at work planting with hopes that the desire for fresh produce will not diminish as a result of the ongoing pandemic, she said.
“Everything is normal for now, but when it does open, we hope that people will want to come in,” Taylor said.
The family is worried buyers might be concerned about the safety of fresh produce. They are preparing for over-the-phone orders and produce pick-up for those who want to shop with less exposure, she said.
Since the market isn’t their only source of income, a bad year will not be detrimental, Taylor said. But, they had been hoping for a good year to make up for last year’s bad crop, she said.
If as many shoppers don’t come this year, the family plans to up its donations to local charities to make sure good produce doesn’t go to waste, Taylor said.
“We are going to play it by ear and pray,” Taylor said. “That’s all we can do.”
‘We will figure it out’
Due to many bad indicators for the market and the still-evolving coronavirus crisis, the agricultural economy is in disarray, said James Mintert, director of the Center for Commercial Agriculture at Purdue University.
Prices have gone down drastically for all types of livestock and every grain. The bottom falling out rapidly with no time for farmers to prepare, Mintert said.
Prices are low now and not expected to go up much by harvest time. Crop revenue is estimated to be $110 to $120 less per acre than the last predicted price three weeks ago, he said.
A number of factors have gone into the decrease, including a change in demand for consumers, hotels and restaurants, and extra stock on hand with no place for it to go. Considering the high unemployment, demand is not expected to shoot up for some time, Mintert said.
The toll of COVID-19 is still being assessed as the virus continues to spread and market projections continue to adjust with each change, he said.
“It is a moving target,” Mintert said. “Another big hog plant shut down [Monday]. It is a fluid situation. It is very much like what you talk about small businesses elsewhere.”
Because the crisis unfolded quickly, farmers don’t have much choice in how to respond, he said.
“In the current environment, there is not a lot you can do. There is not a magic formula that will allow you to manage your way around this,” Mintert said.
Even with the USDA’s aid package, farmers will likely still struggle to make ends meet. That’s the reality, he said.
Local farmers are doing what they can to adjust and have faith they’ll make it through somehow, Poe said.
“One thing I know about [agriculture] folks is that we will figure out the problem. We might not figure it out immediately, but we will figure it out,” he said.
