Harvest brings about a range of emotion for farmers including pride, gratification, contentment — and when prices for crops are low, anxiousness.
As corn ripens, apples swell and the last few sweet cherries are picked, it’s an anxious time for farmers in Leelanau County and across the nation. Their finished products are not valued at prices needed to sustain a living.
In Leelanau, which grows more cherries than any other county in the nation, low returns for tarts have plagued the industry for years. Sweet cherries, however, have held their own in terms of production and pricing.
That is until 2024, when too much rain encouraged disease and insects, then swelled fruit beyond its cracking point. While much was made recently of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s letter seeking a federal disaster declaration, which was released while she was touring the state to promote her auto-biography, disaster loans alone won’t sustain farmers hoping to hand down their orchards to a younger generation.
Ben LaCross, himself a prodigy of a farm family with cherry orchards mostly in Centerville Township, doesn’t like the trend.
“Thirty years ago the United States imported 14 percent of its fresh vegetables and fruits. Now we import over 50%, and the projection is that by 2040 that will rise to over 70%,” said LaCross, a Michigan Farm Bureau director representing district nine.
“The fruit industry and a lot of industries in agriculture have real systemic issues with high cost of production and low returns. That makes the farmer outlook really gray … a country that can feed itself can have independence. But if farmers aren’t making some profit to invest back into their farms, American production is going to go somewhere else. Americans may still have food to eat — as long as there are no supply line delays,” he said.
While Leelanau’s sandy soils are ideal for fruit trees, they are capable of growing only meagerto- average field corn yields. Sweet corn sold at roadside markets continues to fetch $6 or $7 a dozen, but the commodity price paid for a bushel of field corn fell to $3.94 Monday heading into trading.
That’s quite a drop from a high of $8.13 per bushel reached in 2022, and even a sizable retreat from the $4.88 level of one year ago. The USDA puts the average cost of corn production at $4.21 per bushel.
Consequently, U.S. net farm income in 2024 is forecast to slip 25.5%.
“All across the board, agriculture is struggling,” said Casey Noonan, part of the Noonan and Sons Farm in Empire Township. “I think in general, the agriculture scene isn’t in the general public’s mind. They go to the grocery store and buy food at higher prices, but they have no idea how government policy affects farmers.”
He’s in business with his father, Roger, and brother Ryan. The Noonans grow a variety of crops, including corn and hay for their small cattle herd. Most of their business model is based on buying “feeder” calves, fattening them up for a season, then selling for a profit.
“This year all the money you make selling the fat ones goes to buying the small ones for the future,” Noonan said. “There just isn’t a lot of positivity. Guys may make some money on a cattle deal, but that catches up to them because the feeders cost so much.”
Many county farmers hold side jobs — Noonan splits firewood, processes deer and plows snow — to ensure their operations will be around for another year.
Wes Parker, who grows about 500 acres of corn mostly in Solon Township, is resigned to a low return in 2024. Like Noonan, he grew up on the family farm and never left.
Parker also has 40 acres in soybeans, 70 acres in rye, and several fields that produced a big hay crop which was too wet to harvest through early summer.
Parker lost his brother, David, who also lived and helped on the family farm, earlier this year, which caused a delay in planting. With a late start, his corn had a difficult time getting established before a dry spell set in.
“The timing of that wasn’t the best for me. But that’s farming. It was hard when I lost my brother but my siblings came home and helped. People said I should take a week off after the funeral, but we’re farmers. Our lives are different than a lot of people’s,” he said.
Parker also fattens up feeder calves with similar results as the Noonan’, who farm down the road off M-72.
“Cattle prices are extremely high, and feeder prices are higher. I’m handling a lot of money, but not much is staying here. I think we’ll go backwards this year. I don’t know what the future (corn prices) are, but Michigan’s got a big corn surplus,” Parker said.
Yet, Parker says he’s in the business for the long haul.
“I’m a farmer. This is who I am and what I do. You get use to good times and bad times. This isn’t anything new,” he said.
Whether with or without much of a profit, harvest represents an exciting time on Leelanau farms. Owen Noonan, 10, skimmed holding tanks during the cherry harvest on a small family orchard. He’s learning to drive a tractor as extended family members converge on the Noonan farm during harvest.
“My brother, my nieces, my dad, it’s pretty much all family labor,” Casey Noonan said.
So with profits questionable, is it smiles that get the Noonans through harvest?
“They help anyway,” he said.
