Drought hurts more that just local nurseries – Tough times felt throughout county
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When times get tough for the estimated 350 local nursery owners here, it dries up money for the entire economy.
‘There’s definitely a trickle-down affect for us,’ said Randy Griffith, general manager at General Equipment, a John Deere dealer. ‘The nursery people are going to have slow incomes for the next one, two, three years. So yes, there’s no doubt it’s going to affect us.’
A late freeze, coupled with what the National Weather Service has called an ‘extreme and exceptional drought,’ has left many local farmers with a financial limp. The result is nurserymen who usually have profitable businesses are struggling to break even.
‘Buying decisions will change with a person’s income,’ said Griffith. ‘When they no longer have the same income, their decisions are restricted.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this freeze and drought. But I can’t complain too much. In my time here, we’ve had 30 good years and one bad year. This is the bad year.’
Like General Equipment, the financial success of Great Western Bag is tied directly to the nursery industry as the company offers 5,000 to 6,000 nursery-related products. Among the most popular of those products are wire baskets, which the company manufactures right here in McMinnville.
‘When the nursery business hurts, we hurt,’ said Great Western Bag national sales manager Kenny Harris. ‘We cover 14 states, but over half our total business is here locally.
‘We’re hurting, but we’re surviving and pushing all we can to get more business by offering special pricing and terms. It’s going to take hard work and a lot of money to keep these nurseries going.’
The wire baskets, along with other common items like burlap and twine, and used to transport nursery stock. It stands to reason that when nursery sales slow, so do the sales of these items.
From the financial end, Farm Credit has already seen a number of nurserymen trying to adjust their payments or borrow money to get more operating capital. It’s a process Farm Credit agent Lynn McGregor says has just begun.
‘We’re going to see the effects of this for probably the next three years,’ said McGregor. ‘It’s already been a busy summer for us. We’ve had to adjust payments and advance money. I’ve talked to some nurserymen who had loads of trees ready to ship out and when the freeze hit the customers called and canceled the orders. They were scared they might not get good trees.’
McGregor says the local Farm Credit office does about $80 million in volume and says a solid 50 percent of that is directly with the nursery industry. ‘When farmers have a bad year, we have a bad year,’ he said.
He added some farmers are having to redo their loan structure and others are needing to borrow money to replenish their inventory.
In addition to farm supplies, the drought has put a dent in sales of lawn and garden equipment too. Griffith said it’s been a slow year for John Deere’s line of lawnmowers, both commercial and residential.
‘Most people I’ve talked to have mowed their lawn three to seven times this summer,’ said Griffith. ‘So the homeowner has not made the decision to buy, and the commercial series for people who might normally mow 30 yards a week is slow too because they might be mowing four or five yards a week now.’