DECATUR, Ill. (DTN) -- The sight of a lush green field of winter cereals soothes the soul after the long days of harvest.
But this week, as the country plots a course for the next four years, those restorative views seem even more important to Dan Lakey who farms in southeastern Idaho. When political discourse subsides and the votes are counted, fall-planted winter canola and wheat fields will remain rooted in the consistency of another season and another crop.
That doesn't mean that Lakey doesn't have concerns about the outcome of this election and what it means to his farm. Kentucky farmer Quint Pottinger is right there beside him in wondering what the political landscape will look like going forward.
This week Pottinger and Lakey talk about a few of those thoughts in DTN's View From the Cab feature. The two farmers have been reporting in from their respective farming regions since May. This is the 26th installment of the series.
There's another race going on in Pottinger's fields as he works to get the remaining soybean crop harvested. Like much of the country, both farmers still search for more moisture. DTN Ag Meteorologist John Baranick sees a more active pattern across the country and that goes for both Idaho and Kentucky. "Though the really significant precipitation is occurring between the two," he noted.
Read on to learn more about the fixing and fine-tuning these farms will be doing and how they filter the election rhetoric.
QUINT POTTINGER: NEW HAVEN, KENTUCKY
There have been plenty of fireworks at Affinity Farms of late and it has nothing to do with politics. In the middle of corn harvest, a faulty motor at the top of the grain leg had to be replaced. The timing was unfortunate, but it was replaced and good to go within a day.
Whew! Crisis averted.
Then, the very next day, Pottinger was working around the granary and smelled smoke. He found the electric box on fire. "We were so lucky. A lot of times I will walk to the office or do something else while unloading a truck. For some reason, I didn't and when I smelled smoke, I immediately started looking for it," he recalled.
He found the control room in flames caused by a short in the secondary main. He was able to get the fire out with water. The building structure didn't suffer, but some of the circuits were fried.
"It took a day out of harvest to clean up everything and our guys had to come in on the weekend to help, but in the grand scheme of things, we were incredibly lucky," Pottinger said.
The quote to replace the electric box was about $1,300 -- only $200 more than when it was installed 12 years ago. "But it will be two months before we can get one," Pottinger said, noting that a temporary work-around was found to keep operations flowing.
"My big message on all of this is keep your head on a swivel when it comes to safety. Don't take anything for granted," he said.
This week the farm received the first rainfall in 40 days. It was only about half an inch, but Pottinger will take it as conditions are extremely dry. On the final day of October, he had just shy of 1,300 acres of soybeans yet to harvest. Most of them were planted late or double-cropped behind wheat or rye.
Those second-crop soybeans have been bitten with frost, but they were far enough along not to be hurt. Winter wheat and rye have been seeded. "We're looking at the possibility of leasing a couple more farms and may plant a bit more rye if that happens," he said.
Those fall-planted cereals need rain. DTN's Baranick has his fingers crossed that Pottinger's New Haven location might receive more than the light rains being meted out this past week. "The pattern is much more active to their west, but they could receive some more showers in the middle of the week as a front moves through.
"Temperatures have been fluctuating quite a bit, but they'll be on the warmer side of normal ahead of the rain, where it'll almost feel like summer, up near 80 degrees potentially through Tuesday, and even behind it, when temperatures drop into the 60s," Baranick said.
A fluctuating weather forecast seems fitting for Election Day on Tuesday.
There was a time when politics intrigued Pottinger. He served as president of the Kentucky FFA, an organization that he remains passionate about. His personality is built around a genuine desire to serve.
However, the self-serving nature of modern-day politics coupled with the frustration of how little gets done have cooled his interest in participating in the political arena. "I enjoy meeting and working with people when we're solving problems. I love policy, but for me to be interested in politics on that level, there needs to be more problem-solving opportunities," he said.
In that comment comes the realization that the country's governing system was built to work slowly and not always solve every problem, Pottinger said.
"We are a nation of immigrants with many different views, and our Founding Fathers recognized that as they were setting up the Constitution to make a process that was fair and equal for all that keeps the country together.
"There's a lot to do in the private sector. I'll keep working at that," he said.
Pottinger tends to look at this election from a global trade and geopolitical lens. "So much of what we produce is affected by that rather than domestic policy -- outside of the Farm Bill. Migrant labor is important to ag, although not to my farm," he noted.
From that global view, he sees creating some level of peace in the Middle East and energy prices as critical. In his opinion, the war in the Ukraine needs to stop and end with Russia leaving the Ukrainians to govern themselves and their land.
Putting some consistency in the erratic market is needed to allow farmers to budget, Pottinger said. "We need to figure out the world supply and what's being consumed. I think it is the biggest issue we have in agriculture right now," he said.
China often enters that discussion, but he also tosses India and Mexico into the pot. "How much demand for grain for protein production will we see in the next couple of years and is that trend line level and falling, or will it go up?" he asked.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's rejection earlier this year of the long-awaited immigration and foreign aid bill that the senator had once championed has angered Pottinger. Pottinger saw it as a real opportunity to finally address immigration policy.
No matter who wins this election, Pottinger lists trade guidelines and policies for Mexico and China as top priorities. Biden carried over the tariffs instituted by the Trump Administration but left out compensatory trade war payments. "What kind of support payments will we have, and do we need them?" he asked. "It's a tragic question to ask, but do we need to produce as much grain?"
During the next four years he hopes rural broadband gets figured out. "If Starlink can be part of that rather than hardline infrastructure, then we need to reallocate support appropriately," he said. "We need to figure out a path to get broadband into all communities. We can run businesses cheaply in the rural areas, but we must be connected."
A clear energy policy is also on his radar. "If the Jones Act doesn't get talked about seriously in the next four years, my head is going to explode," he said. The Jones Act regulates maritime commerce in the United States and requires goods shipped between U.S. ports to be transported on ships that are built, owned and operated by United States citizens or permanent residents.
"If the act isn't repealed, then commercial trucking and rail should abide by the same rules," Pottinger said. "It is exponentially increasing the cost of energy and the cost of goods from the West Coast to the East Coast. It's a law that won't allow us to reach transportation carbon goals because it's too expensive and cost prohibitive. Without it, I think we can have some more free flow and products, and we can more effectively connect California energy goals to Midwestern ethanol policy," he said.
DAN LAKEY: SODA SPRINGS, IDAHO
The crops may be harvested and the winter cereals seeded, but possibilities of cold weather and snow are pushing the fast-forward on projects for Lakey. The farm crew hopes to break some land out that has been in grass for the last 30 years before the weather gets nasty.
"We've been hauling durum, spring wheat and malt barley and trying to get some contracts filled before the winter weather hits. There are always bins to clean out and equipment to get winterized," he said.
The winter crops look as good as Lakey could hope, given the dry conditions. The good news is he had enough soil moisture to get them started and several timely rains have kept them going. "Canola looks the best it has at this time of year since we've started growing it," Lakey said.
Precipitation has been forecast nearly every day of late in Soda Springs, noted Baranick. "They'll get a bit of a break and some warmer temperatures after Tuesday. But at the high elevations, they may not be able to break freezing on a couple of days. And while I don't show anything on their DTN forecast right now (as of Nov. 1), I wouldn't be surprised to see some precipitation moving back in over the weekend (Nov. 9-10)," he said.
This is the first-year experience of growing winter rapeseed for Lakey Farms. They planted 60-acres of the non-GMO high erucic acid rapeseed under contract with Perdue AgriBusiness. The arrangement requires segregation from other canola crops.
"It didn't germinate nearly as good as the canola, but we have got a pretty full stand now as we get into late fall," Lakey said. There are lots of different growth stages in it -- some plants are only 2-inch diameter and others are probably 20, so pretty inconsistent going forward. Will see how it comes out of winter. It might be just fine."
Lakey doesn't hide that he leans conservative when it comes to politics. "My governing philosophy is less government involvement in personal lives and business, more freedom, and policies that support the free market," he said.
When he translates this to farming, his biggest concern is that neither party seems capable of reining in spending. "Policy proposals from the left like an unrealized gains tax and any policy that makes it harder to transition my farm to the next generation really concern me," Lakey noted.
The policies coming from the right sit better, but he has concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and what involvement he might have in the Trump Cabinet. "He has several good ideas, but I worry about his anti-ag sentiment and the restrictions we might see due to his influence on policy with regards to pesticides and technology," Lakey said.
"Trump loves the tariff. I remember the effect that the China tariffs had on ag prices and that worries me. He's not wrong in his logic of why we need them and that yes, we are being taken advantage of ... but it's just a painful process to go through to correct the last 25 years of trade policies. Something does need to change, it's just hard to get there," he said.
"I believe that we need protections for farmers, but I would like to see less government involvement and subsidies. I would like to see far less junk in the farm bill. A lot of the resources go to other interests and realigned, but neither party has really addressed that," Lakey said.
The one thing Lakey is sure of is that, no matter the election outcome, he believes the country needs to come together. The name-calling and division during this election has troubled him. He has not seen that unity fostered under the current administration.
However, he noted that tension between those of different political views is nothing new. Hateful rhetoric and nasty campaigns have come and gone in the past.
"This country needs to come together, and I would love to see a farmer -- not me!! -- run for office that doesn't disclose his or her political affiliation or just doesn't have one. My dream is to see someone who would run on policies that they lay out for the public and let the public decide," Lakey said.
"I also know that if the election doesn't go the way I want, I'm going to be fine," he added. "One of the things I've learned in life is that we cannot control the way that the wind blows, but we can adjust the set of the sail. If the wind is blowing us south and we want to go north, it does us no good to complain about it with the hope that someday the wind changes direction. We need to set our own sail and do what we can do to navigate whatever environment we find ourselves in.
"We do what we can to work with what we've got. I've been successful in both Republican and Democrat administrations. It sometimes means just adjusting the business and preparing for potentially tough times, but we will be alright if the regulations and restrictions don't get too burdensome for us to continue to do business," he said.
Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com
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