Farmer takes leave of land for hope of work in town By JERRY PERKINS Register Farm Editor 11/25/2001 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Keystone, Ia. - As another harvest season neared an end, Tim Kapucian adjusted the doors of a grain wagon so the flow of corn matched the speed of the auger that carried the crop into a metal storage bin.

When his fall tillage work is finished and the last of his hogs is sold, Kapucian, 44, is going to look for work in nearby Cedar Rapids.

This is his last harvest as a full-time farmer. Next year, Kapucian will join a growing number of Iowa farmers who are cutting back or leaving their farms and going to town to find jobs.

"Farming will always be in my blood, but I want to find a job off the farm," Kapucian, president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association in 1993, concluded after some serious soul-searching this summer.

Farm numbers have been declining for decades as an increasingly older group of farmers retires and younger farmers lose the battle against persistently low commodity prices and rising costs of producing their crops.

But Paul Lasley, an Iowa State University sociologist, said the increasing exodus of 40-somethings such as Kapucian is recent and ominous.

"They're some of the best-educated and innovative farmers we have, and they hold a lot of the leadership positions in Iowa's farm groups," Lasley said. "They represent the future of Iowa agriculture."

Typically, Iowa's older farmers retire when they have built up enough equity over the years and can afford to move to town or to the Sun Belt. Younger farmers tend to quit because they don't have the financial wherewithal to withstand a year or two of losses.

"It's not an economic decision for most of the 35- to 50-year-olds who are getting out; it's a lifestyle issue," Lasley said. "They don't want the stress. They tell me farming just isn't fun anymore. They've worked hard for 20 to 30 years, and they're burned out. They're looking for a change."

The average age of Iowa's farmers has risen steadily, from 47.5 years in 1978 to 52.4 years in 1997, according to the USDA's Census of Agriculture. The census also found that the number of Iowa farmers between 35 and 49 years old dropped from 55,700 in 1978 to 32,200 in 1997.

Iowa Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Brent Halling knows what his friend Tim Kapucian is going through.

Halling, 46, was president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association in 1995. He left the hog business in 1999 after he was appointed deputy agriculture secretary by Patty Judge, the Iowa agriculture secretary.

"It was a sad day when I sold the last of those sows," Halling said. "But it's getting harder and harder to stay optimistic when the profitability of farming has been so very, very slim the past couple of years. It's a reality out there that more and more guys are driving a truck in the off-season or working in town."

Farmers have a lot of time to think as they mind the machines that do much of the work on a 21st century farm. Kapucian spent a lot of time this year mulling his future.

"It used to be that I couldn't wait to get out on that tractor during planting time," Kapucian said. "For the last two years, all I've done is worry about how much it costs to put in a crop. I"d worry that the price I was going to get for my crops won't be enough to pay it all back."

Kapucian also contemplated his own mortality this summer after two college fraternity brothers died, one from a brain aneurysm and the other in an airplane accident. The death of a high school classmate this fall in a truck wreck also gave him pause.

During the summer, Kapucian plotted his future and recalled what it was like when he started farming. The gap between where he was and where he knew he had to be was too wide. It was time to get out after 21 crops.

Kapucian started farming in 1981. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1979 and worked for a couple of years as a seed salesman before coming home to farm with his dad, Louis.

Although neither the father nor the son knew it then, farming's go-go days of the 1970s were about to end with a crash into the farm crisis of the 1980s.

It was not a good time to start farming.

"People talk about the good old days, and I say, "When was that?" " Kapucian said.

Drought hit in 1983, interest rates skyrocketed and farmland values plummeted, pushing many Iowa farmers into bankruptcy or forced liquidations.

Dry weather returned in the late 1980s, then came the Flood of 1993.

Through it all, Kapucian kept going, buoyed by a hope for the future that has to burn in every farmer's breast.

"The old-timers always say it rains 10 minutes before it's too late," Kapucian said.

It was his livestock operation that kept Kapucian going financially, year after year.

With the help of a retired carpenter, father Louis and son Tim built a sow-farrowing house in 1981. Twenty years later, the building is in good shape structurally, but it is hopelessly too small for a modern hog operation.

"I made good money those years on the hogs and cattle," he said. "Now, everything's based on volume, and I don't feel like making the financial commitment it would take to get big enough to compete with the low-cost producers. I don't want to be tied down (by debt) that long."

No one can deny Kapucian's devotion to Iowa's hog industry, as evidenced by his service in 1993 as president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association. But livestock is not the economic savior it once was.

It used to be that Iowa's diversified farms - the ones with corn and soybeans, hogs and cattle - had the best chance to survive. If crops were poor, chances were the livestock was doing well. That's not true anymore.

"Now, it's all about being the low-cost producer," Kapucian said. "You have to farm more ground, buy bigger machinery, and then farm more ground to justify the bigger machinery. It's just a treadmill."

Michael Duffy, an Iowa State University economist, said the phenomenon of fewer farmers working more land has potential consequences for harming the environment, as well as social implications.

"We're losing our middle group of farmers," Duffy said. "We're at a point where we need to ask the question: "What do we want this state to look like?"

"We've got to give farmers like Tim Kapucian viable options, but he's got to want to make some changes. He might not want to make them and that's his right, but he's the micro-personification of the problems we're facing. Until we deal with these issues, Iowa will continue to slip-slide away."

Calvin Beale, a demographer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, said farming is going through the same changes that the manufacturing, timber and coal mining industries are going through: The volume of production goes up as the number of producers or employees declines.

From 1982 to 1997, the number of U.S. farms declined 14 percent, from 2.4 million to just under 2.1 million.

Will the trend continue?

"I guess so," Beale said. "I"m just not sure how few farmers we can get by with."

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

Answers

The One Big Farm/Factory/Store concept finally collapsed in the former USSR. Curiously, we seem to be gradually working our way there in the USA. I remember some of the more politically astute local farmers discussing this several years ago. Not a judgment, just an observation - not trying to stir up anything here.

The same thing is happening here in Gentry county in NW Missouri.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

My dad's youngest brother (and only older than me by 10 years) lives in western Kansas and found himself having to find a job in town several years ago. He and his wife live on the farm that had been in her family for several generations. They've been the typical frugal and prudent (and previously successful) small family farmers and for a number of years managed to hang on and hold out but eventually just couldn't make it without the extra income an "in town job" provided. He was the last of 6 kids who were all raised on the farm that tried to continue; all the other siblings never had an interest in even trying to make a go of farming.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

DH was raised on a farm and has always wanted one,so now we have one. I look at the money we have spent in the past 5 years on this farm and shudder (I could have retired by now if I had saved that money). We make very little money from the farm and it takes 2 of us working full time off the farm to support us and the farm. We refuse to take out operating loans and everything we have except the land is free and clear and very old. The land will be paid for in another 2 years. Even then we couldn't afford to not work off the farm.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001

Sounds like you're going to have some tough decisions to make before long, Beckie. I'm sorry that the ag business has been so unprofitable for you and others who would like to be able to support themselves with it.

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001