| RENVILLE, Minn. -- During planting season, Wayne Schemel
keeps his most important farm data in a leather folder in his
tractor, so he has financial answers at the fingertips. It
doesn't take him much time to calculate a $130,000 blow from a
payment cut on the 2000 crop sugar beets
The payment estimate dropped from $33 per ton early last
year to $19.68 a ton in late January 2000. Since then, it's
dropped even more.
"When it's all said and done it'll be around $16 a
ton," Schemel says, digging out the details on a rainy
day. "You don't recoup that kind of a hit in one year.
It'll take several years to come out of this."
Schemel, 55, has been been farming since 1977. He says he
took over the farm "another lifetime ago" when his
father, Donald, died of a heart attack Nov. 10.Schemel
inherited 150 shares of Southern Minnesota Beet Sugar Co-op
stock and gradually has increased to 450 acres. In the past 23
years, the farm has doubled, to about 3,300 acres. Schemel and
his wife, Gloria, live on the original farm site which has
been in the family about a century. They farm with a son, Tim,
33, who lives on a farmstead about a mile north. |