Oregon Public Broadcasting

The tumultuous economy is hitting some Northwest wheat farmers hard. While the stock market has bounced around wildly, volatility in wheat prices has been even worse. Correspondent Anna King reports.

Doug Young has watched agricultural commodity prices for more than 30 years. He’s an ag economist for Washington State University in Pullman. And these are the wildest times he’s ever seen.

Doug Young: "We’ve had such wide swings in wheat prices that you could have sold wheat for anything between $15 and $4.70 just during 2008. That exceeds the volatility of the stock market."

Right now a bushel of wheat is selling for about four to five dollars.

That’s so low it’s hard for farmers to make any money. And it comes at a time when lots of farmers need to pay the bank for land, fertilizer and seed.

But with the tight credit market, banks are leery of waiting for wheat prices to go up again.

Young says wheat farmers who make it through this year OK are not only good managers, they’re lucky too.