Albuquerque, NM – The price of gasoline isn’t the only challenge for hard-working farmers in New Mexico. The current costs of an important part of the cultivation process are making them rethink their strategy.
“It’s a bad day to be a farmer,” said Glen Duggins, a Chilean farmer from Socorro County.
Prices are rising across the board, especially for products that farmers depend on, like oil.
“It’s double the price, it’s $4.50 and that buys several thousand gallons at a time. It still costs $4.50. We’ve got 200-gallon tractors to fill up, see what it costs, a thousand dollar bill to fill up a tractor and their ‘how about a 14-hour run?’” Doggins said.
Fertilizer prices have also skyrocketed.
“It should be around $4.50 a ton, it’s like $1,200 a ton now.”
This forces farmers like Duggins to make tough decisions.
“In 38 years, we have never, ever fertilized,” Doggins said.
This year, Doggins says he won’t use a pound.
“We will plant the seed in the ground and we will pray, and we just hope that it comes out.”
Between the lack of fertilization and the constant labor shortage, he says, he could cut his Chilean production in half. Farmers have also seen the prices of other chemicals, such as herbicides, skyrocket.
“We bought it with a 250-gallon container, which has been around $5,000 a container for several years, and this year it’s $15,000 and it’s on the waiting list.”
Duggins says this is an issue facing farmers across the country, and those costs will ultimately be passed on to us, the buyers.
“You will see high prices, you will see empty shelves, I guarantee you, and it will go back to oil,” he said. It’s not the war, it was happening long before. Could have done a little worse but we still lived here with high prices. Wars all over the world and they still refuse to pump any more oil.”
He says that he will start planting during the first week of April and hopes that these prayers will be answered.
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