We all know it by now: Food prices are going up. There’s a shortage of bacon! Milk is too damn expensive!
The 2012 drought wasn’t as bad here in Wisconsin as it was elsewhere in the country, but it still has a major effect on all of us. For those of us who buy food, it means higher meat, poultry and dairy products. For those who family farm, it means all of that plus higher prices to feed the animals. But most of all, it means worry.
My family has been farming for at least four generations. I used to think that farming was the way to live life. That was when I was a naïve little girl who thought farming made you richer than it really did. I still love being the child of a farmer, but now that I’m older — and perhaps a little more cynical — I’ve realized farming is the hardest way to live.
Farmers get a lot of flack. Members of my family have probably heard all of the cuts there are. Once, at a breakfast celebrating the farmers of my town, my grandfather heard someone say how it was horrible the government was subsidizing these “rich” farmers. Presumably this man was not a farmer. My grandfather’s reply: farming for 75 years and subsidizing this man with cheap food.
“Rich farmers” is a slur that is heard by farmers a lot. Family farmers, ones who don’t have giant commercial farms, are far from rich. According to a UW Extension Dairy Management report, “More than 90 percent of dairy farm revenue may come from the milk check,” and “More than 50 percent of dairy farm expenses may be feed related expenses.” And even if the milk prices increase, it doesn’t mean the farmer is getting all of that increase. For every gallon of milk sold right now at $3.50, farmers get $1.20. Half of that will presumably go to feed-related expenses.
Feed-related expenses aren’t all a farmer has to spend that $1.20 per gallon on. There are veterinary bills, gas and diesel, electricity for the barn, fertilizer (which costs at least $3,000), seed, building upkeep, property taxes or land rental, machinery like tractors and balers, herbicide, cows, sanitizer for the milk house, and much, much more. With all of these expenses, a farmer can’t get rich off of $1.20 per gallon of milk.
The drought and heat this past summer has also put a strain on cows so they can’t produce as much. This means less milk. When the stores raise their prices of milk, however, it may take a couple months for the farmer to actually see any change in the milk check.
There are a lot of factors that farmers can’t control. Drought is one of them. Death of livestock is another. Well, why doesn’t the farmer get another full time job? Sure, they can do that. But farming is a full time job. It’s not easy having two full time jobs. Throughout my childhood my dad had a full time job, and farmed, and then was laid off. He worked just on the farm for a couple years, then took another job. The cycle repeated.
Every so often I hear on the news of how prices of food are going up. The news covers what woman number one thinks of the new price of milk. Almost always there’s a negative response to the rise in prices. And almost always, the reporters fail to get the side of the farmers.
The food prices affect farmers, too. Farmers have to buy meat and cheese and bread. Raw milk could be taken when needed from the bulk tank to save that expense, but raw milk isn’t the safest to drink. To save money they could butcher a cow, but that cow’s the money maker.
What I want students to do, when they go to the grocery store and see the price of milk and cheese and meat, is to remember that a farmer is suffering from those prices and that drought that brought on those prices just as much as the students are. Complaining will get you nowhere. Don’t turn on the farmers by thinking they’re getting rich off of your need for food. The majority of them aren’t.
