MONROE — It’s that time of year when food producers in Green and Lafayette County start thinking about Spring planting and in the weeks ahead, input costs and moisture levels for the area are major concerns, experts say.

“The whole southern part of the state is still in various levels of drought,” said Josh Kamps, an educator with the Lafayette County UW-Extension service. “We are definitely entering spring on the dry side of things.”

He said low soil moisture levels may prompt some producers to leave cover crops in a little longer to limit soil disturbance as long as possible but otherwise most of the area, he said, just needs steady rain to get levels back up to normal. 

As for farm inputs, chief among them fuel, the rising costs are keeping everybody guessing around the industry.

“They are getting hit from all sides with rising input costs,” said Jackie McCarville, agriculture educator for UW Extension Green County and herself a dairy producer. “The period leading up to Easter is going to be big as far as figuring out where everything is at.”

Kamps said many farmers managed to lock in fuel prices so they aren’t getting hit quite as hard as others who waited to buy fuel contracts. And with food prices for crops rising as well, that may also offset the impact of soaring gas prices.

Prices are at such high levels, he said, some producers who waited are selling 2021 crops for good profits. Others have been calling the extension looking for land to rent or to rent land this spring to take advantage of prices, said McCarville.

All of that has left many producers cautiously optimistic as the season moves toward spring planting. “There’s still profitability to be had in corn production in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois,” said Kamps. “We focus on what we can control.”

Dan Truttman of Truttman Dairy LLC in northern Green County said he isn’t as worried about soil moisture going into spring as he is about having decent rains across the entire growing season ahead. And Truttman said the commodities market is dealing with other issues, including the impact of war in Ukraine on worldwide wheat supply. 

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of wheat, with Ukraine and Russia producing a quarter of the global supply.

“We were already looking at a tight wheat supply before the Ukraine situation,” he said. “In order to get the supply of grain crops back to normal we need a couple of good bumper crop years and we haven’t had them.”