From the Fields - Gino Pedretti III

By Gino Pedretti III, Merced County farmer and dairy farmer

We finished cotton harvest in early November. Yields were down across the board. Our ranch hasn’t finished ginning, but we’re half to three-quarters of a bale down, and that seems pretty standard for everybody in our area. We had a cool spring and more bug pressure in the summertime. Cotton prices are about average. The other row crops did pretty decent this year. We’re finishing fall prep work. We got some alfalfa planted and just planted our wheat.

The beef market has been pretty good. Bull sales picked up, so that is helping our operation compared to the last few years of drought. The drought does a number on guys wanting to buy bulls when they’re having to liquidate cows. With the high cost of feed returning to more moderate pricing, commercial cattlemen are a lot happier.

For our dairy operation, the Class 4 price for butter-powder is still pretty decent. It’s about $19 a hundredweight. Cheese came up a couple of months ago but has gone back down to the high $16 per cwt. range. Since we went to the federal order five years ago, the price you get now depends on where you ship to. Under the state system, everybody got paid a blended price that was about the same depending on your components. Some cheese creameries aren’t paying as much because the cheese price is down, and those dairymen are hurting a little more than other people. Feed costs are down compared to last year, so that has helped.

We are trying to get everything caught up and ready for rain. We hope to get a rainstorm soon because I don’t want to have to turn on the pumps to irrigate. We don’t have canal water in the wintertime; it’s only March 1 through Oct. 31. We have to use wells for any winter irrigation, and with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, we’re trying to avoid that at all costs.