IARN — Concerns about the supply chain continue in the agricultural sector.
Widespread supply chain issues impacting fertilizer, seed, crop protection products, and even machinery parts, have farmers facing another challenge in growing a crop. Marieta Hauser farms in southwestern Kansas and is a Midwest representative for the American Farm Bureau’s Women’s Leadership Committee. She says the price and availability of products to raise a crop are the biggest challenges right now.
“It’s pretty tough right now with the cost of chemicals that we need to put on the crops, the cost of the seed, everything going up and it’s short, we don’t know for sure if we can get it,” Hauser said. “So, it’s pretty hard to plan for the future when you don’t know what you’re able to have available to you. And it affects all areas of our life. It isn’t just the farmer, it’s all of our rural communities and the big cities as well.”
Hauser talks about why farmers need to have a reliable supply chain.
“We need to know that we are going to be able to source the things that we need in order to farm,” Hauser said. “Farming’s a business where we’re on a deadline to get the crops in, we’re on a deadline to get the crops out, we’ve got Mother Nature throwing weather events at us, we need the reliability of knowing the inputs that we need to do business are there.”
Hauser says that despite the current supply chain issues, farmers and ranchers throughout the country are still working hard to get the job done.
“We are out there farming. We’re getting that product out there. It may be a challenge for the consumers to get it, they’re paying more. We get the 14 cents out of every food dollar, and that 14 cents is still what we’re getting. My input costs are higher, 14 cents makes it a little hard to farm on and make a profit.”
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Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.
Photo by American Farm Bureau Federation
