Oregon Public Broadcasting

Oregon farmers knew 2009 was a bad year for their industry. But a new report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture underscores just how bad things were.

The report shows farmers took home substantially less pay. Net farm income is what farmers have left over after paying for operating expenses like fuel and fertilizer.

In 2009 Oregon farmers took a 41 percent pay cut.

Brent Searle grew up on a farm.  He’s now an analyst with Oregon Department of Agriculture.  He says net farm income can fluctuate with economic cycles, but last year’s drop was significant.

Brent Searle: “That is huge. That’s probably, oh one of the biggest drops I’ve seen in my lifetime in agriculture and clearly in the last decade or so.”

Nationwide the decline was 28 percent.  Not quite as abysmal, but still pretty awful.

Searle says declines in Oregon followed a weakening of the overall economy. As examples, he points to two of Oregon’s largest agricultural products-- grass seed and nursery plants.  Demand for both of those goods is tied to the housing market. 

The demand for grass seed also dropped  as the economic decline affected large golf courses. Searle says when times were good many courses would re-seed their greens and fairways every year.

Brent Searle; “And now they’re letting some of those places just go dry.  Some of the golf courses we’ve seen are actually painting their grass green.  They’re cutting way back because people aren’t golfing as much.”

But so far this year, he says there have been some positive signs.  The USDA reports surging demand in 2010 for U.S. agriculture products oveseas.

That’s good news for Oregon farmers. The state exports about 40 percent of its crops to places such as Japan, Korea and China.