"Having a spouse off the farm is vital," Derek Sawyer said. Together, the family's income is down, but not out. She was just named district director for U.S.
#HARVEST CAFE INMAN KS FULL#
The good news is that his wife, Katie Sawyer, works full time. He hasn't bought a piece of equipment or made a major purchase on the farm in a couple of years. The bank rolled the unpaid part of last year's annual operating note into this year's annual operating note. Last year, he sold 250,000 bushels of grain and hundreds of cattle, and still took a loss. He farms 2,500 acres of wheat, corn, soybeans and grain sorghum, and owns 700 cattle, so his operation is bigger than average for that part of the state and diversified. Sawyer, a fourth-generation farmer in McPherson County, has run his family's farm for 11 years. He gets paid when he sells them to the beef packers. When they go off to feedlots, their weight gain speeds up. They'll gain two and a half pounds a day on hay and a special diet he supplies. He'll raise these calves, now the size of large dogs, until they reach 850 pounds. They're too young to eat hay, still relying on milk. Dozens of new black calves skitter around, curious but wary, not moving far from their mothers.
Right now, it's calving season among the 80 cows on the pasture next to his house and farm between McPherson and Inman.Īt feeding time, he watches as cows jostle for space in front of their food. "But we see 2017 as possibly the worst year because if we have a normal yield and low prices, that will not be sufficient to cover the cost of production, let alone the debt of the last year."ĭerek Sawyer visits his cattle every day at this time of year. "2016 ended up being better than we expected, so that was a big help," said Mykel Taylor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University. Foreclosures are still low, but will increase. If prices for most farm commodities don't turn around, many will have to sell off land and equipment. Last year, farmers caught a break with timely rains and a record harvest. "It went from being so good to being so bad so quickly that they aren't able to make the payments on their equipment," said Landon Frank, a loan officer at First National Bank of Scott City and a part-time farmer. Still, the violence of the price drop starting in 2014 caught many by surprise. Some aging farmers took the opportunity to sell out to their children, which loaded them up with debt.įarmers are accustomed to navigating the ups and downs of their livelihood. Most used the good years to pay off loans and buy seed and fertilizer with cash, but many also invested in more land or a new combine on credit. Profit margins are either razor thin or negative. The cause of the problem is pretty straightforward: Following several terrifically profitable years, prices for every grain and animal grown in Kansas dropped to near decade-long lows and stayed down, even as production costs have recently started to fall. Basically, what would the western 80 percent of Kansas look like without farming? The Wichita Eagle reports that agriculture in Kansas generated $5.1 billion in economic activity in 2015, the most recent year for which figures are available, which is just 3.4 percent of the overall $150 billion Kansas economy.īut farming underlays vastly more economic activity, such as the beef plants, ethanol refineries, farm machinery makers or even just the town cafe, which are not included in that number. They've put off purchases, rolled over loans, sold off land and equipment and, in the worst cases, auctioned off the farm and retired.īut the threat is gathering momentum, and a crash would reach beyond the small farm towns to impact the whole state. The vast majority of farmers are managing. It's that most farmers in Kansas and nationwide haven't been able to make much, if any, money farming for more than two years. It's not just that wildfires scorched more than 700,000 acres and killed thousands of cattle in southwest and central Kansas, amid the return of drought in much of the state. Now, those bad old days may be staging a comeback in Kansas farm country. INMAN, KS (AP) - The 1980s are still seared in the minds of farmers: crushing debts, foreclosure auctions and the loss of generations-old family farms.
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