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Auburn, May 11---Farmer Tom Ingram is usually up before dawn these days, heading out to his East Alabama fields each morning to plant 600 acres of cotton. Planting season is well underway for Alabama cotton farmers, and Ingram spends about 12 hours each day in his fields that sprawl through Lee, Macon and Russell counties.

But planting isn’t the only thing on Ingram’s mind. With fuel prices high and steadily rising, Alabama’s row crop farmers are bracing for an expensive summer.

"When the cost of fuel goes up, the cost of production goes up as well," says Dale Monks, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System crop physiologist.

Producers are affected by the high prices in a variety of ways, Monks says, from the tractors and other machinery they use in the fields, to the 18-wheelers used to transport their supplies and products.

"The tractors they use in the fields use diesel, but so do the big trucks used to haul their harvested crops around," he says. "Farmers are looking at ways to reduce their costs. There is currently no fuel alternative for tractors and other farm equipment, so farmers will be looking at ways to reduce their number of trips across the field. But there’s only so much they can do, because they have to maintain their yield, too."

Even fertilizer is more expensive now. Last year, nitrogen fertilizer, made from natural gas, cost about $175 a ton. Carson Jackson, owner of Piedmont Fertilizer in Opelika, says fuel prices have driven the cost of fertilizer as high as $240 a ton this spring.

Ingram says those high prices are tough on farmers. To save money, he has been using a planting method known as conservation tillage for years to help reduce trips across his fields. He’s relying on that method this year to help him keep costs down.

"We’ve been no-tilling or strip-tilling for a number of years," he says. "That helps a lot. It cuts the trips across the field in half."

Monks says farmers use either conservation tillage or conventional tillage when planting row crops. Conservation tillage saves farmers time and money by reducing the number of trips they make across their fields, he says. It also helps the environment by disturbing the soil as little as possible.

"They may be slightly less impacted than a conventional tillage farmer as far as fuel prices, according to their situation," Monks says.

Still, farmers are preparing for the worst.

Lee County Extension agent Jeff Clary says between last year’s expensive drought and this year’s increase in fuel prices, many farmers are struggling to make ends meet.

"Input cost versus what they get for their product has been very expensive," says Clary. "Things were already worse this year because of last year’s dry weather. Now with the increase in fuel costs, too, farmers are very concerned."

Clary says farmers need to get about 70 cents a pound for their cotton to just barely make a profit. Unfortunately, he says, analysts are predicting farmers will receive only 50 cents a pound for their cotton when they sell it this fall.

Ingram says despite the high prices, all he can do is keep on working. After all, he has 600 acres of cotton to plant.

"I can’t let worrying about this fall bother me today," he says. "I’ve got to get out there and plant some cotton."

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SOURCE: Dr. Dale Monks, Extension Crop Physiologist, Alabama Cooperative Extension System, (334) 844-5487