One of the biggest issues affecting the country right now lies in the supply chain.
Many companies are having issues getting supplies to make their products, and that issue is now landing on the farmers in Manitowoc County.
Local dairy farmer Dick Halverson was on WOMT’s Jim and Rick show recently, where he explained how he has been impacted.
“About a week ago, I ran into somebody from our fertilizer plant, and they said, ‘You better start buying some of your fertilizer needs because the prices are really going up,’” Halverson said. “The problem is I paid over twice as much as I did this year.”
Halverson said that the price hike is landing not only on fertilizer but also seed.
“Seed maybe hasn’t seen quite as big of an impact, but it also went up 20%,” he explained. “As far as chemical, Round-Up Lipofade…is triple the cost of what I paid probably a year and a half ago, but they also said to put the product in [my] shed, because it might not even be there next year.”
Steve Hoffman of InDepth Agronomy was also on the show, and he explained why these prices are getting so high.
The obvious shipping issues are part of it, but the other major part is the worldwide demand for food is going up causing the prices for corn, wheat, grains, and soybeans are going up.
“When the crop prices go up, it gives incentive for farmers to need to use more of those products, so that drives demand up,” Hoffman said.
He called that paired with the transportation issued a “perfect storm” saying that farmers can’t get their fertilizer shipments in as quickly as they need it.
Hoffman also said that the transportation issues are resulting in a trip to the grocery store being even more expensive for the average consumer, while the fertilizer prices will hit the public in about a year.
He predicted that food costs will continue to rise due to the major expense farms have in their fertilizer.
