Gerald White made his first crop in 1985. "It was terrible,” he says on a cold, wet, miserable day in mid- February.

“But getting through that year is probably why I’m here today,” he adds.

That “baptism of fire,” he says, was a better introduction to the trials of farming than he would have gotten from a bumper crop.

He’s facing more tribulations as he plans for 2019. With persistent rain preventing much-needed field work, White sat in the conference room of Greenpoint Ag in Marks, Miss., and talked about the hard times farmers face and have faced for the past few years.

The weather has played havoc with farm plans across the Mid-South since last fall. “It started raining at harvest time and hasn’t stopped,” White says.

He will plant corn, cotton and soybeans, and says the rain “will affect corn acreage. We can’t get it planted.”

Wet harvest

Rain that started last fall not only delayed harvest but also caused rutted fields as harvest equipment tracked across wet ground. “We have tons of ruts we have to plow out,” White says. “We will run out of time to plant corn.”

He had planned to go heavier with corn this year and cut back on cotton, “contrary to what everyone else is doing.”

Reduced cotton acreage

He decided to reduce cotton acreage to repay a nearby farmer who helped him harvest the delayed 2018 crop. Winter rainfall, he says, will mean “I have to revert back to cotton and beans. It needs to dry up. It needs to do it now.”

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Cotton still offers the best market outlook, he says.

That harvest delay and unrelenting rainfall damaged a good soybean crop. “We averaged about 3 to 4 percent damage, but some loads went as high as 15 percent. And elevators changed the discount scale; that’s what hurt us.”

He says soybeans offered too little in the market to withstand a deep discount. “Taking $1.50 off $8 to $9 beans leaves no profit.

“We have no room for error,” White adds. “Bad judgement, a business error, we don’t have room for that. We know weather will affect us, so we need to be perfect. That doesn’t happen. Every year, something goes south.”

He says with commodity prices and production costs where they are now, farming “is not a profitable business.

Income is Down

“Farm income is way off in the Delta.” He says he has not delved deeply into the new farm law but adds that it “probably doesn’t offer enough to help much. Cotton got the biggest boost of all with seed cotton back in, thanks to Secretary Perdue. We got a raw deal in the last farm bill.”

White says the current state of the farm economy reminds him of the 1980s, when he got started. “We saw a big run-up in land prices, and then it all went to hell in a handbasket. This is not the same, but it could be a concern if things don’t change.

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“A farmer would have to be financially stable to withstand five years of hardship now,” he adds.

White says sometime around 2012, “a perfect storm occurred,” sending commodity prices way up, “beans as high as $18 a bushel, corn at $8 and cotton above $1 a pound.”

Responding to that market, he says, farm suppliers increased their prices. “I don’t blame them,” he adds. “It’s always a question of what the market will bear.”

But those costs have not abated as prices have tumbled.

“One of two things now have to happen,” he says, for farmers to stay in business. “Either commodity prices have to rise, or costs have got to get back in line.” That includes land, equipment, chemicals, seed and land taxes, which he says are getting out of hand. “We have little tax base here,” he says, so land offers the best revenue source for local governments.

Change will come

He says the only constant in farming is change. Every year is different, and farmers react to whatever comes along. Change will come. “The trick is to hang around until that happens.”

He sees little that he can change on his operation to make it more efficient. He’s already grid sampling and looking for the most profitable yield, not the highest yield he can make. He says some fields simply will not make more than a certain amount.

“I’m not interested in going down to the coffee sop and bragging about yields per acre; I’m more interested in the bottom line. I still need to make a good yield, but a realistic one. An average yield is not going to make money, so I manage each acre for it’s potential.”

He says some producers will abandon grid sampling and maybe fertility with low prices. “People will not spend as much money when money is short.”

He says he’s cut about as much as he can. “I don’t know what else I could trim. I will start drawing in a little and be less aggressive about adding more land. It’s time to hunker down, play defense and weather the storm while agriculture is not profitable.”

He says his father farmed 250 acres, part of it owned and part leased from family. White owns some land and leases some.

He says not many farmers are making money now. “If someone is, he’s smarter than I am, and I would like to pick his brain.”

Optimism

Persistence and patience will be important. “Change will happen. If we can hang on long enough, this will change.”

White has seen some positive changes in agriculture since he started on his own at age 27. Improved varieties and more efficient equipment top his list. “Varieties today yield a lot more,” he says.

GM varieties, he says, have improved efficiency and yield potential. “Three-bale cotton and 50-bushel