nc ks | Mark in WCIowa - 8/25/2023 20:17
Funny. I remember lots of North Dakotans whining that the snow would never go away in time to plant.
For a group of farmers, many of you have little comprehension how uncooperative the weather can be, and little sympathy for anyone but yourselves.
I'm not saying that anything you just said is wrong, it is correct. But I will also say that guys from your area and east have absolutely no idea how uncooperative the weather can actually be.
It isn't going to be very popular with you or those to your east, but we see you guys complaining about a hang nail when our leg just got cut off. While we should have more sympathy or empathy for the fellow farmer feeling stress, it is often hard to go there when we see much more carnage on about every crop and we mostly just take it in stride.
We have bills to pay and expensive equipment that gets worn out doing many more acres for less return. We have the same chemical bill and maybe more do to lack of canopy and small germination encoraging rains. Some of our cheapest input years are when we have cornbelt weather and the plants actually shade the ground. If you think it's expensive to fertilize for 240 bu corn, try fertilizing for 180 bu corn and have thousands of acres that won't make 25 bushel because of 114 degree heat that turned it white at blister. Not even enough time to make decent silage out of it. Now I'm sounding like I have it bad, but I don't. There is next year and we will do it all again.
I have a neighbor a ways from my farm that is one of the most well off financially of anyone around( I know because he shares bits and pieces with me and know he has no debt other than some recent land purchases), but he is the one that whines more when things don't go perfect for him than anyone else I know. I am fairly financially stable so it doesn't offend me much, but I sure hope he just feels comfortable venting to me, because if he is saying what he says to me to the average farmer that is battling to obtain enough line of credit, he is going to look like a fool.
In a way, I see alot of that in the really good areas to farm farmers. They have no idea how silly they sound getting on a public forum and complaining about such insignificant problems compared to those who weren't blessed to farm in almost perfect world. I am blessed beyond what I deserve and I hope I focus on that every day and can be a help to someone else. |
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