Wheat Farmers Hit Hard by Dismal Harvest
PATERSON -- It was a tough year for Eastern Washington Wheat Growers.
A drop in record-high wheat was just the first bad blow. The season followed up with several other downturns.
After what some farmers called a dismal season, wheat growers were back out seeding on Monday with hopes for a better harvest this summer.
"It wasn't good, it wasn't bad but these costs are so high you need to have the bushels out there, grow the wheat to cover your costs," Nicole Berg said, a member of the family-owned farm Lenzie Ranch and past president of the Benton County Wheat Growers.
Berg said her family's business, in Paterson, was down a quarter of its average wheat production this year.
"Everything has just, kind of been adding up over the years and we used to run budgets that were a lot lower than they were in the past two years," she said. "Just with the price increases, they increase for farmers too."
And there's plenty of reasons why.
"Because of our economy, the dollar, there are just all these factors that are affecting the price...supply and demand," Berg said. "Its a risky business. It's like playing the stock market."
In stocks, winning big is about selling when it's hot. The same goes for wheat.
Wheat reached record high-prices last winter but Berg estimated about 70 percent of local farmers did not sell.
Now, she figures farms break even at about $6 a bushel.
"So you hope that the price of wheat goes back up to cover your costs," Berg said.
Plus, a long spring damaged crops while global market downturns cooled demand.
And when it looked like it couldn't get any worse: the credit crunch hit.
"How do you feel knowing that so many of these things are out of your control?" Action News asked.
"That's farming," Berg said.
Wheat is one state's most important crops worth nearly $626 million dollars last year.
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