Farmers Struggling to Make Ends Meet

Farmers Struggling To Make Ends Meet!

Posted on July 3, 2008
Filed Under economy |

We all know that the cost of food is rising daily. Milk, meat, rice and bread prices seem to rise almost as quickly as fuel costs are rising. I have recently become more involved in the Virginia farming community and have been listening to the buzz as they struggle to make ends meet. These men and women are not the huge corporate farms of the mid west but cattle and tobacco farmers who might have a few hundred to a thousand acres of prime Virginia farmland.

The cost of fuel is the primary concern as all farm equipment has to be run on either gasoline or diesel. Farmers who spend a large majority of their time on plowing, disking, raking, mowing, etc are truly feeling the pinch of rising cost of fuel. Stop and think for a moment how high your monthly fuel costs would be if you drove all day long, five to six days a week.

The cost of fertilizer, seed, feed for the stock, and labor has also been rising steadily. While the price in the grocery store seem to be going up right along with them, you would think that the farmers would be getting more for their produce but it seems to get lost somewhere along the way.

Most of the farmers that I know have full or part time jobs and farm in their ’spare’ time and to help pay the taxes on the land and they are struggling to accomplish that now. Add to that the continuing drought in the South East and more and more farmers here are throwing in the towel and turning the family farm into a subdivision. There doesn’t seem to be any good solution in sight as the real estate market is not booming either.

If you have been thinking of buying a farm or a part of a farm, here is a listing of available farms in South Central Virginia. It’s a fairly extensive listing…

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Comments

One Response to “Farmers Struggling To Make Ends Meet!”

marci on July 3rd, 2008 9:08 pm

Here in NW Oregon, some of the farmers would like to be able to throw in the towel and convert to subdivisions, but it is not that simple.

Since it is zoned FARM, it takes an act of congress (almost) to get the zoning changed. The state is very shy of losing any zoned farmland at all to subdivisions - so here, it’s really not a viable option. Takes 5-15 years, and then there’s no guarantee.

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