Farmers reaping more in town

Weekday mornings, Jerry Perkins hits the shower, puts on a suit and, before 8, heads to his lending job at Wells Fargo Bank.

But not until he’s put in several hours at his other job.

By Nancy Lofholm
Denver Post Western Slope Bureau

By the time alarms are buzzing many working folk awake, Perkins has already checked fences, tagged livestock, hauled hay and changed irrigation pipes. And when the workday ends and other bankers might go off to golf games or easy chairs, Perkins is back at the farm putting in another four to five hours of labor.

Perkins’ double-duty days of up to 16 hours might seem extreme. But in increasingly tough times for small farmers, second jobs have become the norm. More farmers than not are now getting off the tractor and heading to town for income.

U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics released in September show that 55 percent of farm operators have an off-farm source of income. In Colorado, more than 15,500 of approximately 32,000 farmers worked off the farm in the latest agricultural census, done in 1997. That figure is expected to rise in this year’s new census.

After he leaves his bank job at 5 p.m., Jerry Perkins goes home to his elk and hay farm near Delta to feed the animals. His two jobs, along with his wife’s income, allow the couple a higher standard of living than they would have if they tried to live only on their farm income.
When spouses’ and family members’ off-farm jobs are factored in, about 85 percent of farm households now count on some off-farm sources of income, according to Mitch Morehart, a senior economist with the USDA. Morehart said that has prompted the USDA to devote more time and resources to study this phenomenon and determine how the trend is going to change the nature of farming in the future.

"Fewer people consider farming their primary occupation anymore," Morehart said. "And we need to understand this from a policy point of view."

Beneath the surveys and number crunching at the state and federal levels, the effects in farm country are easy to observe.

Farmers who would normally be kicking back a bit at this time of year – fixing equipment, deciding when to sell crops and putting their books in order – are heading off to construction jobs, working on drill rigs, driving trucks, selling feed, operating lifts or driving shuttle vans for ski areas. Some work by the hour for larger farm operations.

In the agriculture-based Uncompahgre Valley where Perkins farms, 574 of nearly 1,000 farmers who responded to the latest agriculture census hold second jobs. The majority of those work more than 200 days a year off the farm.

"During onion harvest, I worked until midnight a lot of days," said Jamie Rubalcaba, a 28-year-old farmer who says he must work long hours to afford to farm his 150 acres of sweet corn and yellow beans near Olathe.

Rubalcaba said he generally spends about 20 hours a week working his own farm and 40 hours working for a neighboring farmer who has a large operation and a packing shed.

Rubalcaba tried working for a tractor-implement business but said it was very tough for someone who was born and raised on a farm and always worked on one: punching clocks and taking orders is foreign to many farmers.

That is cited as a problem across the country.

"I really don’t see farm skills translating to a lot of other employment very well," said Peggy Haafke, who worked with a program in Iowa called Shifting Gears that was designed to help farmers with off-farm employment. "Farmers are independent. They are used to making their own decisions. They want to be out on their farms working. They don’t want to be in a factory."

Shifting Gears was created after 96 percent of Iowa farmers said in a survey they would need to work off the farm in the future. But it was abandoned more than a year ago after it was deemed to be unsuccessful.

Farmers seem to be finding the work without government programs to help. The USDA’s new report shows off-farm income is eight times higher than it was in 1969 and three times higher than it was in 1987.

Morehart said the latest projections from his agency show that farmers this year will earn an average of $59,235 off the farm. That figure includes the wages of spouses. Farm operators will earn on average only $2,622 from their farming operations after deducting the costs of farming, including depreciation.

Morehart said USDA researchers have discovered a surprising motivation behind this trend.

"One of the assumptions was that if they have off-farm sources of income, they do it to contribute to the farm, but we found the primary motivation is a career choice," Morehart said.

Perkins said that is true with his off-farm work. Before becoming an agriculture lender 12 years ago, Perkins taught agriculture at Delta High School, and he said that through all those years he has tried to keep the finances of his 125-acre elk and hay operation separate.

The money he makes at the bank and what his wife makes as a schoolteacher doesn’t keep the farm going. But it allows them a higher standard of living than they would have if they tried to live only on their farm income.

Rubalcaba said that may be the motive for some farmers, but he doesn’t believe anyone farming less than 300 acres can survive anymore without a second job. Most of those with larger operations don’t have time to work another job, he said, even though they might need the money.

On many of those larger farms, it’s the the wives who have the jobs.

"If they (the wives) don’t work outside the home, it’s because they are replacing hired hands that the farmers can’t afford to hire anymore," said Polly Proctor, who works as a bookkeeper for Red Beard Bean LLC.

This off-farm work trend is changing the way farmers farm. For example, some farmers with second jobs have started growing crops such as alfalfa, which is less labor intensive than other crops, or barley, which has a shorter growing season.

More are using seeds pretreated for pest and weed control because that saves on labor during the growing season. Some contract to grow crops for agricultural corporations because that generally requires less of a farmer’s time.

And time can be precious to farmers who find themselves irrigating in the middle of the night and needing to show up shaved and showered in an office first thing in the morning.

The USDA will watch that trend in ongoing studies, Morehart said.

Perkins said the jobs can be hard to juggle. He might find a sick calf or a broken irrigation pipe on his early-morning farm rounds and have to deal with it as the deadline looms for him to be at his desk in his other job.

Farmers say that whether they are working off-farm out of necessity or by choice, they put in the long hours because they aren’t ready to give up the farming lifestyle – and they don’t want to see it lost to their children.

Rubalcaba said he’s willing to work from dawn to midnight so his four children will someday have a farm to inherit. If the trend holds, they may also have to work long hours to keep that farm.

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