Farmers in southwest, south central North Dakota try to hang on
ZEELAND, N.D. - With his pastures withering away, Wes Mastel gave up on hauling water and decided to sell his herd of about 115 cattle.
"I'm running out of options," Mastel said.
Mastel, 24, had been farming with his family, and started out on his own last spring with rented land. He hopes rain will come soon for his corn, wheat and alfalfa so he can salvage something and have a fresh start next year.
"I'm going to try to hang in there, but if it doesn't work, I'm not going to get too deep in debt," Mastel said.
He was among about 150 farmers and ranchers who met with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in Zeeland on Thursday.
The state's congressional delegation and Gov. John Hoeven are asking the federal Agriculture Department to allow haying on more Conservation Reserve Program land. Dorgan and Sen. Kent Conrad and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-ND., also are pushing for disaster legislation in Congress.
"A quick way to make them (farms) shrink even more is to make them go through a drought with no help," Dorgan said.
Hoeven said he has asked the state Farm Service Agency director, Gary Nelson, to complete damage-assessment reports as soon as possible, in a move toward a federal disaster declaration.
Notice the sympathetic tone of the article. It seems like farmers are never held accountable for their business practices.
All business involves risk. As someone involved in a small business who comes from a family full of people who own their own businesses I know that better than a lot of people. So why then aren't farmers held responsible for the risks in their line of work?
Certainly dry weather is a known risk for farmers, so why aren't they prepared for it? Why does everyone act like these things take farmers by surprise? How come every time we're hit with some dry weather, wet weather, cold weather, hot weather or whatever other kind of weather farmers don't like the politicians run off and get disaster money?
If something adverse to my business were to happen I wouldn't get any sympathy from the press, and I certainly wouldn't be able to petition my politicians for some aid money from the government coffers. Or, I could petition them I guess, but they wouldn't listen.
If we were talking about a freak summer with absolutely no rain after decades of fine growing weather I might understand how farmers wouldn't be prepared, but this seems to happen every single year.
I think the agriculture industry needs to re-think their business model. Clearly there is not enough room in it right now for a reasonable amount of risk. Dry spells are going to happen. Wet spells are going to happen. We need the farmers to come up with a way to deal with these risks as other businesses do so that they aren't constantly running to the government for relief. It seems like between subsidies and "disaster" relief we've just about taken all the risk out of farming.
That's now how a free society is supposed to work.
Update:
My North Dakota blog buddy Brett Narloch from TakingBackND IM'd me to point out this idea from ND Senate candidate Dwight Grotberg that is aimed at solving the very problem I describe above:
Allow farmers and ranchers to put a significant percentage of their annual gross income into a tax-free shelter that they could draw upon when a crisis occurs or when opportunities arise. Due to production fluctuations, the fact that farmers cannot set their own price, and that we are susceptible to surcharges for transportation, we need this important tool to help encourage savings for hard times.
That's a solution I could get behind. Certainly it would be better than the current system where a few dry months wipes farmers out and the federal government has to bail them out.