HURRY UP AND WAIT

Reader Contribution by Lois Hoffman
Published on May 16, 2019

Farmers in the Midwest are playing a game again this spring that has become all too familiar with them over the last few years…hurry up and wait. Above average rainfall during March and April, coupled with the massive flooding in many areas, have prevented them not only from planting but even getting the dirt worked to plant.

Farmers are more dependent on the weather than those in any other occupation. It can make or break them. I knew when I went to work that I was going to be there for 8 hours and get paid for eight hours, five days a week. Farmers don’t have this guarantee. Their whole livelihood depends on the weather. A grower from northeast Indiana echoes the sentiments of famers all over the Midwest, “It’s been too cold and too wet, I haven’t turned a wheel this calendar year yet.”

Farmers spend most of the winter months, or at least those weeks since the first hint of spring is in the air, getting equipment and supplies ready to go. By now, they have greased, oiled, repaired, washed, waxed and gassed up all their equipment and are ready to rock and roll. There is nothing else to do but hurry up and wait. How frustrating!

It is easy if you are a farmer or a family member of a farmer to feel the anguish. However, this year everyone will feel the widespread effects of too much rain for Midwest growers. The trickle-down effect will hit supermarkets and we will all feel the impact. After all, farmers feed us all.

This whole mess started last fall with above normal rainfall during harvest in September and October. Farmers had a hard time getting their crops out last year. The excessive autumn rainfall saturated the fields and the moisture stayed in the ground all winter. There were record amounts of snowfall on top of that and then when the spring thaws came followed by more heavy rainfall this spring it proved too much for the ground to handle.

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