Paul Sanguinetti San Joaquin County farmer
This cold weather has been good for the permanent crops. I’ve got a crew pruning walnuts. With the almonds, they aren’t pushed yet, so there’s probably not any bees being put out yet. The ground is dry enough that some guys are out planting onions for the early market. Guys are working on equipment and are probably not spending any money any more than they have to, because costs have really gone up. Fertilizer has more than doubled. Because of the cost of fertilizer and chemicals, I can see farmers doing a lot more mowing instead of spraying weeds to try and cut costs. I think everybody is going to be really careful on how much they put on. We’re trying to get away from labor and use more mechanization because the cost of wages went up. To save money, many farmers are using hedgers to do as much mechanically as they can. We’re going to try some here, but the ground is still too wet to get the heavy machines in. There’s enough water for Stockton East (Water District) this year. We don’t have any restrictions, so everybody’s planning on being able to irrigate. Our district is a dual district. You have to have the pumps when we get dry years, when we use groundwater and surface water. We’ve had a lot of problems out here with guys stealing stuff. I’ve got three pumps that I’m going to have to run new (copper) wires to. It puts us in a bind because we have to fix all this stuff. We might grow garbanzos, and we are going to plant some silage corn. Field corn is another option too. We’re going to plant some canning tomatoes. In February, we’ve got to start making these decisions. I’ve been trying to get all my year-end stuff done and get all of the books in shape for the accountant. This is the book work that has to be turned in by the end of this month for employees and all of the information that has to be sent to the government. A lot of farmers are working on their books.
Photo/Ag Alert file photo.
February 2, 2022 Ag Alert 5
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