A lady told me the other day that “most farmers don’t have a clue what the average family is going through today with higher fuel prices.” She believed with the high price of corn, soybeans, and wheat, most farmers were living on ‘cloud 9’ and had no clue what it was like to be on a fixed income and experience increased expenses.
I explained to this lady that while her fuel costs were increasing, so were the farmer’s, and the farmer has to use fuel to transport their commodities to market. I went on to tell her farmers and ranchers can not pass this expense on to the next guy because they don’t price their own commodities. I also told her not only were increased fuel prices hurting farmers, but so were increased fertilizer costs, land rent, seed costs; and if you were a livestock farmer you were experiencing all time high feed costs mixed with low livestock prices. I also explained to her that while it was costing her more to heat her home, livestock farmers were feeling the same pressure as they paid to heat their livestock barns.
Farmers are definitely feeling the same pressures as the average family with increased input costs. I don’t know if I changed this lady’s mind, but hopefully I gave her some food for thought. This was another reminder to me that we in agriculture have to start telling our story because the average American is more than three generations removed from agriculture and they don’t understand where their food comes from.