(Atlantic) For many farming operations across the corn belt, the 2021 harvest season is one for the record books with high yields coupled with high grain prices.
While farmers are enjoying a profitable harvest, planning for the 2022 spring planting season will present some challenges, with skyrocketing input costs heading into the 2022 growing season caused by a chemical supply shortage.
Erich Wickman, along with his wife Tammy, own Wickman Chemical north of Atlantic.
Wickman says the problem began in 2020 when COVID 19 struck China. He says the virus hit during the Chinese New Year and shut down production in China at a critical juncture. The typical two-to-three-week layoff turned into a 12-to-18-week halt in production.
Wickman says besides the lost production time, COVID caused a labor shortage at the ports, warehouse houses are half staffed, people aren’t coming back to the workforce, and truckers are behind, which could carry well into 2022.
Wickman says if producers come out of panic mode and turn into a way of action will find costs per acre will go up a little, but not a lot.
Wickman says his job as a chemical dealer and advisor is to try and find alternative products. Wickman says another problem is producers are trying to buy chemicals meant to go to South America. While the U.S. is heading into winter, South America is going into summer.
Wickman suggests producers quit panicking and start thinking, go to their chemical suppliers’ meetings, figure out a logical plan and follow it. Wickman added this country relies on the Chinese to do so much for us, and the U.S. needs to become more self-reliant and manufacture chemicals in the United States as we used to.
