Farmers can secure financing totaling tens of millions of dollars each year from a vast web of creditors including commercial banks, Farm Credit institutions, government agencies, co-ops, farm suppliers, credit cards and family members. Crop supplies are often purchased in the fall, with loans paid off after the following year’s harvest. Some farmers use 30-day lines of credit from co-ops or farm suppliers, and others lease millions of dollars of machinery from equipment dealers. Larry Stenger, regional president at First Mid-Illinois Bank & Trust in Sullivan, Ill., said farmers in his region often use their trucking fleets for off-farm work in winter months, transporting grain for nearby elevators or hauling goods for other trucking firms. “There are opportunities out there for those looking for it,” Stenger said. Some larger-scale farmers, who dominate U.S. food production, plow some crop profits into trucking or supply companies to diversify income and insulate themselves from agriculture’s price swings. Dave Nelson, who farms 5,000 acres near Fort Dodge, Iowa, invested in a group of equipment dealerships, selling construction and farm machinery. He and a partner also acquired an e-commerce site to peddle parts and farming gadgets online.
Technology makes much part-time work possible. Larger, satellite-guided tractors and high-speed planters let farmers sow fields in days, compared to weeks in decades past. Wireless-enabled equipment streams data on seeds planted and crop yields to farmers’ tablets and computers, helping to automate record-keeping.
Still, outside work can hurt the ability to take on more acres. Some farm management companies, which often act as middlemen between absentee landowners and the farmers who grow crops on the rented land, prefer farmers who can devote all their attention to raising crops throughout the growing season and aren’t splitting time with another job.
Chris Morrow, a farmer in northwest Missouri, rises four mornings a week at 4:30 a.m. and drives an hour to his outside job at Herzog Railroad Services Inc., in Falls City, Neb. He works a 10-hour shift inspecting inbound railcars in need of repairs.
Six months out of the year, he then drives home, climbs into the seat of a tractor or combine, and tends the 350 acres of corn and soybeans he farms with his father-in-law until well past dark. He spends weekends planting or harvesting, and last year, he used eight of his 10 vacation days to do field work or manage his small cattle herd.
“From February to May, there’s not much family time,” said Morrow, 32. “From October to mid-November, it’s go, go, go.”
During the growing season, he passes up shopping trips to Kansas City with his wife, Meagan, and skips trout fishing with friends. But he tries hard never to miss the baseball, basketball or football games of his 14- and 8-year old sons.
He said he would like to quit his day job and farm full time. But his half of the $14,000 the farm netted last year isn’t nearly enough to support the family, even when added to his wife’s income from a job in town. Much of that profit will be plowed back into the farm, hopefully reducing the size of the loan he needs from the bank to plant crops this year, he said. Some will go to repairing the porch on the family’s century-old farmhouse.
Morrow figures he would need to grow crops on 1,000 to 1,500 acres to make ends meet through farming alone. But there’s little land available nearby, and when acres come up for rent, they are typically snatched up by bigger, better-capitalized operations able to pay higher rates.
“Right now it doesn’t look very promising to be able to pick up more ground,” he said.
For now, Morrow said, he is content — he doesn’t like to sit still and thinks farm life teaches his sons good values and a strong work ethic.