By Clint Thompson
Now is the time for growers to make preparations for the upcoming spring season.
Jessie Rowan, Alabama regional Extension agent, who specializes in commercial horticulture and farm and agribusiness management, explains why.
“Come end of February, March and early April, they’ll do a lot of that physical preparing of the land, of the crops. Now they’re doing a lot of just planning for that time and planning for spring and summer and deciding what crops to do. and hopefully, just looking at their budgets and some of their costs from last year,” Rowan said. “The increasing costs are something that you just can’t ignore. Everyone’s talking about it; fertilizer, labor shortages, which is nothing new to the fruit and vegetable industry.”
What Can You Do?
Rowan implores producers to consult their records from last year and compare what the costs were to what they were projected to be. Growers need to compare the prices they received for their crop and see if they can get an increase, especially during a time when inputs like fertilizer have spiked so much. Farmers must be willing to adjust because of the impact of input costs.
“Some of these increasing costs are going to change some practices that are being done. I know people that are not an organic operation but the fertilizer that they would have typically used has gone up so much, they’ll say, ‘I’m going to use chicken litter.’ ‘I’m going to use something different.’ They’re having to pivot because they can get this other option,” Rowan said. “It’s a little cheaper.”
Extension trainings are also important component of offseason planning. It would benefit farmers to attend as many of these workshops as possible to obtain the most current information.
“This is when you’re going to have the most free time to go to those trainings and Extension knows that,” Rowan said.
Alabama Extension will host online vegetable meetings, beginning Feb. 23 through March 30.