NORTH JACKSON, Ohio – Ward Campbell is the sixth generation to farm his family’s North Jackson property.
His son, Nick, is the seventh, and his sons, 13 and 11, will likely be the eighth. Nick Campbell taught and coached for a few years and also worked in the corporate world but always planned to work full time at the family’s Deanmar Farms, named for Ward’s parents, Dean and Marian.
“I guess heritage more than anything – I’m the seventh generation – and the knowledge that nobody’s worked this ground that wasn’t related to me,” he says. “Before our family owned it, it was just woods and inhabited by Native Americans.”
But unpredictability with global markets and geopolitics prove challenging for farmers. Costs of fertilizer, gasoline and diesel surged in March following the start of the ongoing military operation by the United States and Israel in Iran. Iran responded by effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, a channel through which a portion of the world’s oil travels. Disruptions to global supply chains led to fertilizer shipping delays and price increases.
Increased Costs
Nick Campbell says the farm has its own fuel tanks that were filled before the conflict began so it hasn’t been affected by those price increases yet.
They bought fertilizer in advance too, paying to store it at the dealer’s business.
“I’m not going to get hit quite as hard as a lot of guys are going to get hit, because the availability right now is really up in the air as far as whether there was enough fertilizer already brought in to handle the area, or not,” Ward Campbell says. “The prices are just soaring out of control.”
The roughly 1,000-acre Deanmar Farms, which produces corn, beans, wheat and hay, uses about $130,000 worth of fertilizer in a typical year.
“I just heard recently that some of the urea, which is dry nitrogen, is pushing $700-$750 a ton,” Ward says “And we’re used to paying $350 to $500 a ton.”
While the conflict in the Middle East is an extreme example, price fluctuations, and other factors outside their control occur regularly for farmers.
“We do a lot of work this spring and gamble on the weather and Mother Nature and stuff in hopes to break even, so that we can be in business to do it again next year,” Ward Campbell explains. “It’s a little different than a lot of businesses.”
Dale Woolf, third-generation owner of Woolf Farms, a 200-acre orchard in Salem, also buys fertilizer ahead of time to prepare for the season.
“We try to plan ahead on good years to try to order ahead, getting stuff that way,” he says. “We’re prepared for anything for maybe in the next four or five months. But there is a time where we are going to have to reach out and get things and prices are increasing, and hopefully, we can have something to help farmers with that cost.”
Planning Ahead
So far, planting costs for this year mirror last year, but that doesn’t mean costs won’t rise as planting season approaches.
Woolf Farms grows strawberries, allowing customers to pick them, as well as blueberries, raspberries, peaches, vegetables and 90 apple varieties.
“We try to be well rounded to help protect our farm from any weather conditions,” Woolf says.
The farm also presses and sells its own cider and sells doughnuts, ice cream, candy and other treats.
“There’s always been things that affect farmers for generations, and it is nice to always have multiple generations to reach back and see what we’ve done to get over some of these tougher spots,” he says.
Because of the variety of crops, planting season at Woolf Farms runs most of the time.
Diesel fuels tractors and other equipment at the farm and as soon as the latest Middle East conflict started, the farm filled its tanks to prepare.
But the farm is dealing with the increased gasoline costs. Woolf Farms’ trucks travel through much of Ohio and into Pennsylvania, delivering product to restaurants, bakeries, ice cream stores and farmers markets.
When gas prices increase, shoppers see the added costs at the grocery store because the farther food travels, the more expensive it gets, Woolf cautions.
“Your best prices are always [at] your local farms,” he says. “If you come here, you’re always going to find your best price that we can offer, because we don’t have the fuel cost in there.”
The farm also offers events for families and children throughout the year.
The last time gas prices spiked, it took some cooperation with the restaurants and ice cream stores to enable Woolf Farms to do deliveries on one truck. Restaurants ordered in bulk so the farm was able to make fewer trips. All the Cleveland deliveries occurred the same day while all Pennsylvania deliveries were on another single day to keep fuel costs down so Woolf Farms could keep prices down.
But the farm isn’t at a point where it’s considering reimplementing that plan.
“Going back about 25 years, fuel prices don’t seem to affect us right away,” Woolf says. “But as we get later in the year towards the fall, that’s when we start having to maybe get more orders in one truck.”
Still, unpredictably is nothing new.
“That’s farming, though,” Woolf says. “We’ve been doing this for three generations. I cannot look back and find a year that is ever the same as another year.”
That’s why membership in the Ohio Farm Bureau and the American Farm Bureau is helpful, he says. Those organizations help farmers.
“We want to feed our communities,” Woolf says. “We don’t want people to have to spend all their income just feeding themselves. We understand that, but the prices of equipment and seeds and fertilizer and fuel, all that stuff, is increasing.”
The more people who come and support local farms, the better the prices, because the food stays in the community, he adds.
Cuts Could be Coming
Owen Niese is the vice chairman of the Ohio small grains marketing program at the Ohio Corn & Wheat Growers Association and a corn, wheat and soybean farmer in Richland County.
He tries to buy fertilizer at favorable prices but conflicts like what’s happening in the Middle East aren’t anticipated.
“I have a lot of fertilizer bought but not all of it,” Niese says. “And I’m looking into 2027 and how to deal with rising input costs then. So you hate to say it, sometimes you have to cut back. But right now, that’s kind of the thought is maybe we cut back on our fertilizer usage, or maybe we change what crops we grow in order to kind of mitigate that risk.”
Niese’s farm relies on four diesel-powered tractors to get his crops out so there’s no getting around those increased costs, which will force cuts in something else. That may mean foregoing capital improvements or waiting to buy more land.
“Those things are kind of going to be taken out of the question, because there’s going to be less cash left at the end of the season,” he says.
Haley Shoemaker, agriculture and natural resources educator at the Ohio State University Extension in Mahoning and Columbiana counties, says fertilizer cost is a conversation among farmers every year as it fluctuates often. That’s why a lot of farmers opt to prepay and lock in a price.
“Budgeting and creating that ideal expense enterprise breakout for farms is an art because farmers are price takers,” Shoemaker says. “They’re not price setters.”
For many, a significant portion of their income comes in one season. They make decisions hoping prices when the crop is ready to harvest meet the year’s expenses. “So it’s very much a gamble,” she says.
Technology may ease some costs with many farmers using drones for pesticide application and techniques like precision seeding. Precision seeding could be as simple as adding an upgraded piece to a planter or adding GPS technology, Shoemaker explains. A lot of farm equipment comes with GPS technology enabled, so a farmer can actively map a field while planting and adjusting seeding rates based on soil type or compaction.
“There’s a lot of data analysis that goes into farming in general that the public doesn’t necessarily realize, but that’s how we’ve made our processes as efficient as they are,” Shoemaker says.
Rather than buying a drone, which may be expensive and require the user to be licensed, some farmers go through a cooperative to reduce costs, she adds.
Despite the challenges and unpredictability, farming is something that’s in your blood, Ward Campbell of Deanmar Farms says. His ancestors bought the farm in 1852 from the Connecticut Land Bank and his family has farmed it since. He started helping his father when he was about 5, milking cows, and began driving tractors and learning farm operations at about 10.
He was one of five sons and he and his oldest brother took over the farm. Ward bought out his brother when his brother became ill and many years later, Ward is transferring it to Nick.
“When something’s passed down like that, the respect level that the children have is altogether different than somebody passing down a restaurant to somebody or a hardware store,” he says. “It just means more. It is a way of life that’s hard to describe.”
Pictured at top: Nick Campbell, left, and his father, Ward, stand at the family’s Deanmar Farms in North Jackson. They are the seventh and sixth generations, respectively, to farm the land.
