Basin Ag:  The BEST of Times?

By Phil Hayworth

Pioneer Press

Fort Jones , CA

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

page E9, column 1

pioneerp@sisqtel.net

It's a little late in the season to be tilling soil, irrigating and getting ready for planting, say most Basin farmers. After all, they say, it's been a long, cold winter and there's lots of water on the ground, making it tough to get equipment onto - and out of - fields.

And then there's the cold; strange fluctuations anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees. By the time you read this, it will have cooled down somewhat from the weekend's balmy 70s, putting farmers on guard once again. What we need now is consistency, they say.

"What we need is a lot of sun and some warm weather. Pray for warm weather," said Klamath County Farm Bureau representative Bob Valladao.

Brian Charlton of the Oregon State University Extension in Klamath agreed, saying he figures the season is bit late now, but high yields - and soaring commodity prices - could more than make up for any losses.

"Row crops like strawberries and onions are the first to go in," he said, "followed by potatoes."

Spring cereals such as barley and wheat typically go in in mid April, Charlton said, but "because there's been so much snow, it took time for the fields to dry." And that, he said, has set things back a few weeks.

Within two months, the first hay cuttings will be in and other row crops will be close to harvest, he sunningly added. That means the season will soon be in full swing and the Basin will be busy doing what it does best: feeding the world. Indeed, it'll cost folks a bit more at the store this year, with about 10 percent of most household discretionary income going to food - and prices are expected to increase four percent this year. While those increases are a problem here, there's a groundswell of concern that prices will soar out of the reach of many poorer countries.

Prices for Klamath's agricultural commodities have increased steadily over the last three years, bringing total revenue from livestock and crops to $200 million in 2005, $205 million in 2006 and $298 million in 2007. Livestock lead the county's ag revenue last year, bringing in some $140 million. Strawberries lead the county's crop revenue last year, bringing in some $61 million, followed by alfalfa hay at $43 million. All of those numbers are expected to soar in 2008. That's the upside of the Basin's economy, Valladao said. 

"The downside is that it'll cost farmers a lot more to fertilize their fields and to keep their trucks and tractors on the road," he said.

Gas prices - including natural gas prices - figure heavily in any farmer's budget, he said, cutting into the profits made from $170 to $200 a ton hay market price expected this year.

Farmers are stocking up now on their fertilizer, he said, and the folks at the Basin Fertilizer & Chemical in Merrill said they're going great guns right now to get supplies to farmers.

Most hay farmers, however, run cattle on their fields to fertilize them the natural way - with cow pies, Valladao said. For more intensive farming, such as potatoes and strawberries, fertilizer is need. But not too much, Charlton warned.

"You reach a point of diminishing returns when it comes to applying fertilizers, especially with the cost of natural gas," he said.

Natural gas is used to capture nitrogen from the air, which is liquefied, then pumped into the ground through fertilizers, he said.

"There's pretty much of a curve set here, and a lot of research has been done on these crops so that most farmers know exactly how much they need. They've established pretty rigid cost curves," he said.

And maximum yields don't always equal maximum returns, he said. Too much product on the market can drive prices down, and the cost of labor to actually move the product from the field to the market can cut into revenue, he said. 

"In general, we're blessed with relatively good soil in this Basin," Charlton said. "Drained lake bottoms are high in organic matter. But besides the water issues we've been dealing with for 10 years, our short growing season and susceptibility to frost kind of pigeon-holes us to planting only suitable crops here" such as potatoes, onions, hay and strawberries. 

To a greater degree, labor costs affect a farmer's profits, Valladao said.

"It's always a struggle to get good hands," he said, "especially when most folks don't want to work for $7.95 an hour."

That's the state's minimum wage, and a wage that all farmers must pay their hands. Most of the basin's row crops - strawberries, onions and potatoes - require more labor than, say, alfalfa, he said.

"You can't mechanize strawberries," he said. "It probably takes two to three times the labor to produce strawberries."

That means that companies such as Lassen Canyon Nursery in Macdoel are bringing in migrant labor willing to work long hours for relatively low pay -- relatively low, Valladao emphasizes.

"Look, for migrant workers from Mexico , minimum wage here is big bucks to them," he said.

The majority of row crop farm hands in Siskiyou County and the Basin are migrant - or seasonal - workers. Many are given places to live, so the money they make is maximized.

There's been lots of talk about "illegal" workers in our fields, and the Oregon Farm Bureau is often quite cagey when it comes to discussing such matters.

"Basically, all farm workers have to produce a social security number and the regular documentation that all other workers have to produce," said Shaun Clive, lobbyist with the bureau.

There's been talk on a state and national level to make farmer's themselves responsible for checking workers' names against social security numbers, he said. If they are found to be illegal, under pending legislation, the farmer could be responsible.

"The way we see it is that if someone lies about their social security number, it's their own personal responsibility, not the farmers," he said.

Clive said that legislation along those lines is often stalled because even the Social Security Agency admits that their database is inaccurate. Still, Clive and the bureau spend tons of time and money fighting the kind of legislation that would put the onus on the farmer.

"It really gets tough on crop farmers, with all the complaining about Mexican labor coming in," Vallabao said. "You can't get someone in from the city who is out of a job to come out to pick strawberries. And we've got it pretty good here in Oregon . You can go in to Nebraska where they pay $5.50 an hour for minimum wage."

But somehow, every year - through long winters, wet ground, rising fuel prices -- Basin farmers get it done. In the end, the payoffs are great, Vallabao said.

"I don't think many of us would rather be doing anything else," he said.

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