Putting aside any judgment about farming systems, the majority of ag in the United States manages weeds through herbicides.
We literally are managing fields this year for weed reduction in 2024. Even if big farmers get the highest commodity grain prices in ages, their input costs might turn their growing season into a financial train wreck.Ĭoming back to the idea of farming systems, as organic farmers we do an insane amount of management around weeds. We ordered the bulk of our supplies last year, before the current war, and aren’t facing a fraction of the trouble larger farms that are now sourcing their increasingly tight fertilizer or herbicide supplies. Even if prices rise 10%, it doesn’t alleviate a 30 or 50 or 90% cost increase on supplies. There’s talk about food prices feeling insane, but less folks are seeing the double and triple rising of other supply costs for farms. It would take a couple years and likely a million bucks to make that change. We simply don’t have the equipment, storage and harvest capacity, labor, seed access, materials, and so on. But we aren’t set up to grow our entire 40 acres of tillable fields in carrots or potatoes. In a crisis, we theoretically could switch and grow all carrots or all potatoes (or substitute whatever higher calorie crop you want here). We are a small, nimble farm that can make relatively abrupt changes among our diversified mix of about fifty crops. But regardless of what you grow, those commitments cost time and money and trap you into your chosen system. Those commitments could include a particular set of tractors and implements, or certain field layouts or greenhouses or barns or market delivery systems and so on. Once you find that sweet spot, then it’s time to invest in it and commit to making it work better.
Through experience and trials and education, each farm figures out what they can grow and how they can grow it at a price that’s both affordable enough for customers and profitable enough for covering farm operation costs. The problem is, all us farmers-even us little “resilient” and “adaptable” ones (more next week on my anti-resilience stance!)-have committed to some sort of growing system. I know they meant well, and I might complain up a storm as a grumpy old farmer about how food prices haven’t kept up with the cost to produce them over the past decades (and this was BEFORE this past year’s craziness), but the rising food prices are actually much more terrifying to farmers than they are to customers. I ran into a neighbor last week who said to me, “Oh, you must be excited about this year and how good it’s going to be for you with food prices rising for once.”
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