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by: Kevin Barry
Posted: Mar 23, 2022 / 10:36 PM CDT
Updated: Mar 23, 2022 / 10:36 PM CDT
by: Kevin Barry
Posted: Mar 23, 2022 / 10:36 PM CDT
Updated: Mar 23, 2022 / 10:36 PM CDT
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Prices on everything from homes to fuel are going up between supply chain delays and rising inflation, but consumers could see bigger increases in food prices because farmers are seeing increases in input costs across the board.
“It’s very abnormal,” said Olathe farmer Steve Bowlin. “I’ve never seen it in my life.”
Even with a profession that normally works under the open sky, Bowlin has built a greenhouse structure so that he can get a few-month head start planting vegetables in a climate he can control before his outdoor fields are ready.
“It expands my growing season by two months,” Bowlin said.
He needs as much extra time as he can get because profit margins for farmers right now are wafer thin. Between Bowlin and his son, they farm about 100 acres of row crops and 17 acres of vegetables, of which Bowlin expects to get about 75% of his profit from the vegetable crops.
It’s more labor intensive but starting some produce a few months early means he can harvest and replant multiple times, growing more to sell and saving resources like fertilizer, which has more than doubled in cost in some cases.
Kansas Congressman Rep. Tracey Mann (KS-01) heard complaints like Bowlin’s and joined Kansas Senator Jerry Moran and Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate to act the U.S. International Trade Commission to remove duties on fertilizer products imported from Morocco and Trinidad and Tobago.
“Not only are prices high, but you add tariffs on top of that and they become astronomical and so this, if it gets traction, should help our farmers all through the district,” Mann said. “People talk about inflation being six or seven percent, tell that to our Kansas AG producers who are setting a 300 or 400 percent increase in the price of fertilizer over just a few months ago.”
There’s no word yet on if the ITC will make that change so Bowlin said farmers like him can only get creative and save a dollar where they can.
“All of this here was from last years’ profits,” Bowlin said, gesturing to his vegetable crop. “So, we’re starting out blank zero and then going from there.”
The war in Ukraine also complicates the global agriculture market because they were the fifth-largest exporter of wheat in the world in 2019 and a lot of fertilizer comes from Russia. The fighting going on there now puts all that in jeopardy.
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Fertilizer costs, international conflict, supply chain issues holding agriculture back – WDAF FOX4 Kansas City
