2012 a time for caution in agriculture, farm leader says

One week after he was elected president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, Craig Hill settled for the first time into a large leather chair in his West Des Moines office and talked about a banner year that had just passed for Iowa farmers and wondered whether it would bode well for the future.

The overworked phrase “guarded optimism” fit Hill’s mood to a T.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture had predicted that net farm income for 2011 would top $100 billion for the first time ever. Iowa farm land had increased nearly 33 percent during the year. By most accounts from bankers, farm economists and casual observers, farmers were floating on a deep blue sea of liquidity.

“It’s a time for caution,” Hill said.

At 56, Hill has witnessed the farm collapse of the 1980s, following then-record farmland prices and the pressure they generated for farmers to borrow against the generous value of their fields.

The farm crisis, he said, removed a generation from farming. With farmland at record levels and costs of fertilizer and seed and all the other collective costs of production expected to increase 12 percent this year, Hill worries that the gates could close on another generation just entering the business.

“It’s not guaranteed that our future will be the same,” he said.

The challenge in the upcoming year is to make certain that regulations don’t overwhelm farmers. Family-run farms, despite the wealth generated in the last couple of years, don’t have the resources to meet the guidelines, whether they run a hog confinement operation or raise vegetables, he said.

“There are farms that are going to be forced out of operation because of regulation,” he said.

Preserving government-subsidized crop insurance is another of Hill’s goals for the coming year, as is preserving funds for research into areas that will cut the cost of production, he said.