12/18/06 Putting grain prices in perspective

Farm and Ranch December 18, 2006 Northwest wheat growers have seen good prices in 2006. Earl Pryor, Chairman of the Oregon Wheat Commission, knows how rare price levels like this are in a farmers career. He only needs a few fingers from one hand to count them. Pryor: "Three times. Stretching back to 1948 was the first crop I raised." Evan Hays of Idaho, who is president of the National Barley Growers Association, has never seen barley prices this high. But he points to the other side of the ledger and the increasing costs of inputs farmers have had in the past few years. So even though he has seen a 75 cent a hundredweight increase in his malting barley contract; Hays: "Is not going to make me whole as far as my input costs are concerned. The energy side of it is where we are seeing such a significant increase. And more important to me than diesel fuel is the cost of fertilizer." And then there is that perennial, uncontrollable variable farmers face, the weather. Jerry Snyder, now immediate past president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers knows that. Snyder: "Yes, in my own personal case on our country's birthday on the 4th of July we ended up with about 40 minutes of hail and in an hour and a half 70% of my farm was harvested. It is nice to have high prices but if you don't have anything to sell it really doesn't matter." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.