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 got. 

As David Nogueras reports the reports 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 there have been some positive signs so far in 2010.   The USDA reports surging demand overseas for U.S. agriculture products. 

Oregon exports about 40 percent of its crops to places such as Japan, Korea and China.