MACON, Ga. — The Georgia Farm Bureau just came out with a data researching how COVID-19 is affecting farmers.
The bureau questioned almost 900 farmers for the survey. It found that 82 percent of the folks they talked to will lose income this year due to the pandemic and they will lose an average of about $49,000.
James Vaughn knows cattle. He won National Farmer of the Year in 2018, but 2020 and the coronavirus strained his skills.
"For the last five years, we've been shipping out cattle to the European export trade and COVID shut down Germany, Italy, and Switzerland at least as hard or not harder than our restaurants," he explained.
The Georgia Farm Bureau estimates cattle farmers are having the most difficult time, followed by folks who plant field crops.
For Vaughn, it's a one-two punch.
They lost the market overseas, and here in the United States, there is a glut of animals.
"There is still a backlog of cattle in the field lots, and whenever there is more than they can process, that tends to push the prices down for us," he said.
David Reed is 70 years old and has farmed cotton his whole life in Dooly County. He hopes he's part of a group of farmers that can hang on in a pandemic.
"The apparel business, everything stopped -- everybody was home, nobody buying anything, then the mills shut down and they weren't using any cotton, and then the price just fell out of it," he said.
Reed estimates it cost him more to plant cotton than he will make in harvest this fall.
"Used to be the more you farm, the more money you'd make. Now, it's the more you farm, the more you lose," he stated.
Both men say the government stepped in with some help when the pandemic first broke out, but they add they need more help from Congress and the president to ward off their losses.
"We need us to stay out here, the American people need us to stay out here," Vaughn stated emphatically.