Production Costs Outstrip Revenue for Wheat Farmers Aug. 28--KOLIN -- Dark clouds loaded with rain gathered over the western horizon as Don Taylor finished the last swath of winter wheat in his field on a recent afternoon. It's a good crop this year in central Montana, but the price for his product won't cover the cost of growing it. "It's a beautiful picture," he said of the golden landscape, foreground for the skyline that provided backdrop for Charlie Russell paintings. Taylor's yield of 45-65 bushels per acre is above average. "I'm not complaining." But his farming business, west of Lewistown, is in trouble because the cost of production is outstripping his revenue. "I have a bumper crop, and I'm going broke doing it," he said. "I'm faced with questions of how to fill the fuel tanks to bring in the crop. I could not afford the insurance to cover expenses. "I've lost more money in the past five years than I made in the previous 35," he said. Input costs -- chemicals, seed, fertilizer and fuel -- are sharply above the current price for winter wheat. Spring wheat, now waiting a visit from the combine, faces a similar scenario. Last week, ordinary hard red winter wheat with a protein level of less than 11.5 percent was getting the farmer $2.85 a bushel at the elevator at Moore. For 11.5 percent and above, it brought another 20 cents. The ag banker in Lewistown figures the input costs are in the $3.25-a-bushel range. It doesn't take an accountant to figure the red ink. "We're getting raped; it's pathetic," said Gary Gollehon, who farms at Brady. "The customer cutter's cost of fuel went up more than 40 cents a gallon in a month," he said. "Fertilizer has tripled in five years." He said the fertilizer dealer won't give him a quote for the coming planting season but he knows it will be more than $300 a ton. Dry fertilizer cost about $250 a ton in 2004, $280 this year and is expected to run from $300-$320 for 2006 -- that is, if natural gas prices, a key component of fertilizer, stop skyrocketing. A wheat farmer uses a ton of fertilizer, on average, for every 20 acres planted in fallow ground. A ton covers about 12 acres when wheat is planted into a re-cropped field. Gollehon works the family's homestead 45 miles north of Great Falls along the eastern front of the Rockies. He is the fourth generation. Like Taylor -- they're both 59 -- he's spent his life raising grain, mostly wheat, but sometimes malt barley. Last year, he harvested 50-55 bushels an acre, but that included a top application of urea fertilizer, which cost him $50,000, he said. This year's crop is 45-50 bushels an acre, but without the urea. "It did not pencil this year," he said. A Canadian custom-cutter harvests Gollehon's crops. Todd Dorchak, of Lethbridge, started with the wheat harvest in Vernon, Texas, in May and will end in Peace River, Alberta, in mid-November. He operates seven combines with a crew of 21. Quelle "Production Costs Outstrip Revenue for Wheat Farmers" : Yahoo_News Main page for "Production Costs Outstrip Revenue for Wheat Farmers"