Monday, August 21, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section D·Page 5
By Phil Cauthon
Kanson staff writer
10 a.m. June 15 — Jerry Lampe climbs into his late-model John Deere combine as the heat begins to swell on the plains of western Kansas. The high-tech machine's plush interior is a far cry from the old days of suetling, dust-ridden harvest. An ergonomic seat, A/C, finger-touch shifting and Paul Harvey's "Rest of the Story" on the radio remind the 61-year-old farmer from Kendall how different farming is these days.
Perched above the vast stretches of wheat he planted 10 months ago, Lampe pauses before firing up the combine and remarks that the combine — along with other equipment and his land— is just about all he has to show for his life in the field.
Dennis Carter — farmer from Syracuse, Kan. — said this year's wheat crop was yielding about 40 bushels per acre. That pales in comparison to last year's 60 to 70 bushel-acres, but may still allow Hamilton County farmers to break even.
"Anyone in this business who would've sold out 10 years ago and put the money in the stock market would be a wealthy person today," said Lampe, a wheat veteran of 50 years. "Or at least they'd be a whole lot better off than they are now."
Lampe, 61, expects this year's wheat crop — no worse than most of his and other farmers' most recent crops — to yield about a 3 percent return.
Armed with more than a million dollars worth of land, equipment and other investments; after months of sweat and incessant worry; even after substantial government subsidies, he might earn $30,000 this year. And that's an estimate, not a salary or wage he can depend upon.
That's one reason he couldn't expect any of his five kids to take on the family land as Lampe did after his father retired. In fact, he says he'd probably advise them against it.
"Agriculture isn't attracting any youth because of the return on the investment," Lampe said. "Basically you're out here slaving away for peanuts."
"My oldest son is working for a communications deal in New York making a lot more money than I'm making. How am I supposed to tell him to come back and farm when I retire? And he'd like to farm, but I don't know if I can recommend it. That's sad. Real sad."
Big-time business or buet
big time business of it
To get the most out of costly machinery — espe:
cially given dismally low wheat prices - the incentive is for farmers to take on more and more land, whether by buying the land or leasing it
Thus begins a vicious cycle: larger and larger crops — which lead to flooded wheat markets — which lead to perpetually depressed prices.
Many farmers, including Lampe, try to stay ahead by cultivating as much land as possible. But more land requires newer and more expensive equipment capable of harvesting more wheat in less time. And the newer the tractors and combines, the less likely Lampe can make repairs himself, adding even more costs when the inevitable breakdowns occur.
Other farmers cope with the stingy wheat market by reducing their financial commitments to the farm or getting out of farming altogether.
*The fields make more noise when they're dry and
ripe.
How do wheat farmers know when it's time to harvest?
Responses from Hamilton County farmers include:
*The wheat heads will lean over when they're ready.
*You can bite the berry and if it's soft at all, it's not ready.
Dennis Carter, a 56-year-old farmer from Syracuse, gave up farming wheat on 4,000 acres of land that he had rented from an elderly widow in Kansas City, Mo., in favor of planting sorghum on his own 480 acres in Hamilton County.
By planting sorghum, a stalky green plant used for feeding cattle. Carter can sell his crop in the field to local dairies. The dairies harvest the crop themselves, allowing farmers like Carter to liquidate nearly all equipment overhead.
Carter has found other ways to reduce his family's dependence on the farm's income: by buying the town's liquor store and helping Lampte harvest his wheat every year for two weeks in June.
"Out here if you don't have 2,500 or 3,000 acres of wheat, why, it's pretty tough to make it," Carter said. "If you want to keep a smaller farm, you have to supplement your income with something else!"
Other farmers sell their entire farms when a seemingly insumountable debt looms.
After farming for 14 years, Melvin and Ione Louk sold their land and eventually began work at a grain elevator that they run in Kendall.
"I (farmed) because my folks did," Melvin said. "We did well pretty well until the dust bows around 54."
From then on it just got to the point where I couldn't afford it. It's probably good we got out when we did."
2 p.m. June 15 - Lampe has harvested about 50 acres or nearly 2,000 bushels of wheat — since morning, running his combine at a brisk 4 mph. Paul Harvey's radio program is interrupted by local news reporting that the county's average yield is just under 40 bushels per acre — not bad by some counties' averages, but not great compared to last year's 60- and 70-bushel acres.
The news update also reports a 20-percent chance of rain as a cold front works its way south from Montana.
"That's an 80-percent chance of not raining," Lanne remarked, still attuned to the report.
Custom cutters
As the cost of harvest equipment has crept up, so has an entire industry built around maximizing the productivity of expensive, high-tech combines.
Fleets of so-called custom cutters travel from Arizona to Montana, harvesting wheat wherever they can find work. Like any harvest work, custom cutters' hours are from about 10 a.m. or as soon as the morning dew dissipates to several hours past sunset. And instead of the individual farmer's typical two-week harvest, their harvest season starts in early May and doesn't end until late September.
But even after maximizing the hours eked out of his equipment, Lon Wurz's custom cutting business has just as tight a profit margin as the farmers themselves.
"in the whole harvest industry, everybody's kind of looking over their shoulder as to whether it's time to bail out or if we're going to ride this dead horse into the ground," said Wurz, now on his 28th harvest.
"Bailing out is probably the intelligent thing to do. But this is what I am. This is my form of identity. It's what I love. It's what I want to do. But it just ain't working. It takes me a lifetime to figure this out. I know I should quit, but I probably won't." he said.
Wurz sees the most viable solution to the American farm's predicament in expanded overseas markets.
"When I was a little boy, I remember my dad saying, 'We're the breadbasket of the world. We feed the world, and we need to be proud of that. He was right,' Wurz said. "But the rest of the world is farming now, and if something doesn't change pretty soon, I'm not sure we'll be needed anymore."
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