by Lent C. Carr, II for Hoke County Commissioner 2022. Photo Attribution Credited to Emmaus Corp. Embassy Digital Media and Production Co.
Our Farmers are in Trouble. If we sit back and do nothing we all suffer. Since September 2020, the cost of fertilizer nationwide has spiked up to 300% as demand for its primary ingredients like ammonia and liquid nitrogen has soared.
**READ FULL STORY AS ORIGINALLY REPORTED BY WRAL— LINK PROVIDED BELOW:
https://www.wral.com/rise-in-fertilizer-prices-threatening-to-drive-farmers-out-of-the-agriculture-b
Be it price gauging, a by product of Covid-19’s global disaster, or simply some nefarious act taking shape behind the scene of bureaucracy’s inflation special interest machine— the fact of the matter remains unchanged; our local Farmers in Hoke County need our County Commission to strategize a comprehensive plan to insure that every Farmer in our County stays afloat until some definitive answers and/or a remedial solution has been enacted by our Federal and State Governments to stop the bleeding of this critically important Agricultural industry whereby they’ll be able to see some semblance of light at the end of this disastrous hike in fertilizer pricing tunnel. What’s even the more reason to act now rather than later is that in some cases farmers are not being able to even find fertilizer in order to produce and sustain a healthy crop for its consumers. our County’s Agricultural Citizenry are not looking for a hand me out, they’re looking for the many years of Tax Dollars paid forward meet them at such a dire moment.
The Agricultural and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University researched these rising fertilizer prices and lookEd deeper into what could be done about the aberrant price hikes. That report found that " the largest whole-farm impact would fall on feed grain farms at an average of $128,000 per farm." See report at: https://www.agweb.com/news/crops/corn/50-surge-fertilizer-prices-adds-128000-farm-costs-2022-finds-texas-am-study?fbclid=IwAR0cmiGNr74u2BiEnomaMrc0XIddMQWLVDvuFs-4UDfvLihm94v-Dk_zw7I#:~:text=Under%20FAPRI's%20August%202021%20baseline,season%20(relative%20to%202021).
We need not look any further for support for our Farmers than Grants already provided our County for Farmers in fundings specifically geared towards our essential Farmers, and if need be— pull from other Federal Dollars sitting in the coffers of our Budgets untouched.
Make no mistake about it; if our Farmers fail (at no fault of their own volition) then we all fail and suffer shortage of produce; higher prices and God forbid little to no produce availability for the whole of us as Hoke Countians. And no! We cannot afford to wait this emergency out for primaries and elections— the current County Commission Board must act now.