EDINBURG, Illinois – Spring 1995 has given entirely too much thinking time to many farmers in the American breadbasket.
“Right now, I’m just trying to think about that dirt out there,” says 40-year-old Rob Swinger, who farms near this town in central Illinois.
By late May, his 1,100 acres of corn were in, but none of his 1,100 acres of soybeans.
“We have had some idle time on our hands this spring to worry and that hasn’t been good.”
The problem is a lethal combination of weather and politics. The effects, later this year and through the next few years, undoubtedly will seep north across the 49th parallel into Canada.
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Poor spring weather has delayed seeding in a grain belt that stretches from the Dakotas to Illinois. Farmers think about falling yields and the possibility that some fields won’t get planted at all.
There are predictions that even if good weather now prevails, the 1995 U.S. corn harvest will fall by 20 percent or more from last year’s 10 billion bushel record.
Last week it rained again across the corn belt, delaying planting one more time.
In Washington, meanwhile, the politicians are debating a new farm bill that almost certainly will legislate sharp cuts in future American farm supports.
Aides to Republican congressmen who now control the Capitol Hill agenda predict that by autumn, there will be a new farm bill that will cut up to $8 billion from the $40 billion or more that would otherwise be spent on farm subsidies to the end of the decade.
“If that happens, I think it would effectively kill the American farm program,” predicts American Farm Bureau president Dean Kleckner, an Iowa corn farmer and conservative leader of the nation’s largest farm lobby.
For Canadian farmers, it is a critical debate. Even at reduced levels, U.S. farmers will be more subsidized than Canadians and some of those subsidies will be used to depress prices in export markets.
“The result of the farm bill debate will have a direct bearing on us,” says Prairie Pools Inc. chair and Saskatchewan Wheat Pool vice-president Ray Howe.
“Even if there are budget cuts, there will still be subsidies and protectionism in the next bill and that is not good for us.”
Back on the American farm this troubled spring, producers have had time to listen to the debate and consider its consequences for their own operations.
For Swinger, who farms in the productive soils of central Illinois where corn yields of 180 bushels per acre are not uncommon, the projected cuts could be the difference between profit or loss.
Last year, on a gross revenue of $400,000, his farm received farm payments of close to $30,000.
“That was just about what we made last year,” he said. “That was our profit margin. If that goes, what will replace it?”
