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Wheat Farmers Celebrate Harvest But Many Giving Up

Posted on: Thursday, 15 June 2006, 07:45 CDT

By Carey Gillam

WELLINGTON, Kansas - They are crowning a wheat queen in Wellington, Kansas, this weekend. And in July, when the bins are full, a wheat king will lead a five-day-long harvest festival that for more than 100 years has been an annual ritual in this dusty prairie town.

Here in Sumner County, typically the biggest wheat producing area in the biggest U.S. wheat-producing state, the annual wheat harvest is rolling again.

It is a much-loved tradition that stretches across the Plains from Texas to the Dakotas as fathers, sons, cousins, uncles and brothers-in-law steer combines through the burned-gold stalks from noon until midnight, bringing in the wheat that becomes the basic ingredient for bread products served on tables around the world.

But it is also a part of the American landscape that is vanishing as farmers find it increasingly difficult to make a living. Wheat farming, in particular, is declining markedly as profit margins have eroded to barely break-even or less.

"This way of life of farming is about over. There is no money in it," said veteran wheat farmer Richard Becker on a recent June day as he watched his son Shawn guide their red combine across a neat field of hard red winter wheat. "My son and I are thinking about getting out."

FACING A CRISIS

A report issued earlier this month by groups representing U.S. wheat growers, wheat millers and wheat export groups said so many farmers are giving up on planting wheat that the industry is facing a crisis.

"It is quite a concern. We're at the point that even with an average crop and average prices there isn't any profit," said Dale Schuler, a Montana farmer and president of the National Association of Wheat Growers.

Both domestic use and exports of U.S. wheat have been suffering for a variety of reasons, including technology that reduces waste by giving greater shelf life to bakery products, low-carb diet trends and increasing competition from wheat farmers in India and the Black Sea region between Europe and Asia.

The weak demand has left prices stagnating in the $3.00-$4.00 a bushel range in recent years, the same prices farmers received in the 1920s. The market did see a spike in prices last month to more than $5.00 a bushel in many areas, but that was only because this season's extended drought sharply reduced the supply of new wheat, wiping out many wheat fields throughout Texas and Oklahoma as well as across parts of Kansas and Nebraska.

"Yeah we have higher prices this year on wheat, but that is because a lot of farmers don't have much to sell," said 55-year-old Robert White, who has planted wheat on his farm south of Wellington for 37 years.

White said because he finds it so hard to make a profit in wheat he now only plants wheat on about 300 acres a year, down from the 1,200 acres of wheat he planted a decade ago.

The past two years have been particularly hard for farmers as fertilizer and fuel costs have climbed dramatically, adding to the cost of production.

The combination of factors had caused the amount of farmland planted annually with wheat to drop from nearly 90 million acres in the early 1980s to around 60 million acres now, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Farmers are either giving up on the ground entirely or switching to other crops such as cotton, which commands a higher price per bushel and has been made easier to grow through genetic engineering.

Indeed, the money earned by wheat farmers annually as a percentage of all field crop receipts has dropped to 11 percent from 22 percent in the early 1980s, according to the USDA.

WHEAT SUMMIT SCHEDULED

Wheat industry groups working to reverse the trend have called a national "wheat summit" for September 7, and are asking players from throughout the food chain to help come up with a strategy for reversing the trend.

Some are calling for domestic farm policies to be altered to allow for more "true" market pricing instead of subsidies that wheat farmers say make other commodities more attractive than wheat.

As well, many are pushing for new genetic technology that they hope could increase the profitability of wheat farming by making the crop cheaper and easier to produce, and more nutritionally appealing to consumers.

And the industry is hoping to jump-start domestic demand with consumer marketing campaigns that deride low-carb lifestyles and encourage whole grain consumption.

Back in Wellington, where the pickups bear license tags proclaiming the area the "wheat capital of the world," many of the farmers are seeking out second, and sometimes third, jobs to keep the bills paid.

"It's a matter of economic survival," said 55-year-old White, who sells insurance in addition to working his fields.

"You know I have two sons and they both want to farm," said White. "It's one of those things you hope they will, but you also hope they won't."

Source: REUTERS

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