Talk to the room.
Thank you.
Fuel and fertilizer.
The cost of them has spiked due
to the war in Iran that has
disrupted crude oil fields and
transport, as well as the export
of fertilizer.
On farms in Wisconsin, growers
consider their crops and spring
planting in the face of this
price volatility.
Wisconsin Farmers Union President
Darren Van Ruuden is here with
more. He joins us from Westby, and
thanks a lot for being here.
Thanks for having me this morning.
So what are your farmer members
saying about the price shocks
happening right now?
Well, lots of concerns.
You know, some of our members
actually were able to book their
inputs last fall.
So probably aren't going to see that
sticker shock this spring, like we
are amongst other members
that don't
have the ability to, because of cash
flow problems, buy that.
So they're right now probably
examining, do we stay with
corn and need to put more
nitrogen on the ground?
Or should we look at a small
grains crop or do we plant
more soybeans?
Just because of that price of
fertilizers has increased so much in
the last two weeks here.
What are the ways the increased
cost of fuel impact producers?
Well, really in all aspects,
number one, it costs more to get the
items that we need to
produce the crops to the farm.
There are surchargers that are
co-ops in process or
delivery folks will be charging.
It's gonna cost more to put the
crop in the ground unless you
were able to book that
fuel earlier, which
doesn't happen very often.
And then just to get the
products that we produce to the
consumer through the processors and
distributors, we're probably
going to be seeing surcharges on
those deliveries
too.
The Trump administration just
waived a 100-year-old shipping law
to speed up oil and fertilizer
shipments ahead of spring planting.
How welcome is that?
Well, you know, if it helps in that
price of what the cost is to
get by that gallon of diesel or that
gallon of gas, you know, it
certainly is welcome news.
But I'm hearing that it's,
it probably will have very little
impact on it because, you
know, planting season is
probably two weeks away in southern
Wisconsin here right now.
So can that really impact what's
going to happen on day one when
farmers need to be in the fields?
Big question, Mark there.
Yeah, for sure.
So how difficult is it to
move from corn to
soybeans or other crops just
kind of on a dime here?
The biggest thing is
is the availability of the
seeds.
So, you know, farmers generally
try to have that contracted earlier
delivery, you know, at this time of
year, those seeds are being
delivered to the farm.
So if your supplier
has adequate supplies of both,
you're in good shape.
But some years,
they'll the people that we
buy from are trying to guess
what farmers are going to do.
And so could be one
or the other.
Small grains is another issue
because a lot of suppliers don't
necessarily have Large
quantities of that seed available.
So it might take two to three weeks
to get that to come in from another
source
So even ahead of the war in Iran,
how have Wisconsin farmers weathered
tariffs and resulting markets?
Yeah, certainly.
You know, last year was not a good
year for farmers on
the on the economic side.
A lot of farmers posted losses
in corn and soybeans, especially
because of that disruption
in the marketplace and not having
those overseas buyers to buy that.
You know, we have weathered a little
bit of that with
the increased prices that
we've seen after President Trump
denounced some of the trade deals
with China.
But we still haven't seen all
of those markets come back to the
level that they were two,
three years ago.
How meaningful have one-time
payments out of Washington to offset
tariff losses been for farmers
in Wisconsin?
Well, it certainly has helped ease
some of the pain between
the banker and the farmer, because
they were able to pay maybe a
bigger portion of the
operating loan that they had.
But in reality, when you look at the
real numbers, it was only
about 15% of what farmers
needed to pay for their
production costs.
So in the end, we're still quite
a bit behind on that process.
You know, farmers generally want to
receive our income from the
marketplace and not depend
on Uncle Sam to send us
a check when we're in dire needs.
And so with the trade war
that we had, you know, those market
conditions were really
impacted in a negative way.
And it's really a frustration of
farmers that we need to
depend on the federal
monies to come in, in order to pay
bills.
Alright, Darren von Rudden, thanks
for explaining all this to us.
Thank you, Francisco.
That I didn't get to and it's,
I don't know if it's serious or not,
but how are
farmers managing that huge
snowfall that hit?
Yeah, you know, overall,
fairly well, I would say, you
know, there were resilient
bunch and they do.
I haven't heard of any roof
collapses or anything like that,
that we've had in years past.
But there could be some that you
just haven't heard about.
But you know the biggest thing is
as long as the snowplows can get the
roads cleared, we can keep
the milk going in and keep the
animals moving where they need to to
and I
hear every once in a while about a
farmer maybe getting a tractor stuck
with a brownbill to get out to
feed animals, but generally
if they need help from a neighbor
you'll get that and make sure
that the animals are happy as
can be in that kind of weather.
Good. Well, thank you.
Enjoy this spring weather.
Thank you, Frederica.