"At today's prices, corn brings in roughly $1,200 an acre. Safflower will bring in $750. But fertilizer is less than half the cost, the seed is less and I won't need the same irrigation or pesticides," Hoppin said.
He planted 370 safflower acres this year, up from none last year, and he doesn't plan to put any corn in the ground after planting 500 acres a year ago.
"I will know if I made the right decision about next December, but that's the nature of farming," Hoppin said.
Imperial Valley farmer Mark Osterkamp is also paying close attention to his farming costs.
"We are chasing the tiger. There's a wild grain market, but there's also a shortage of all the inputs for agriculture," said Osterkamp, who farms about 7,000 acres of wheat, sugar beets, onions and forage crops for livestock.
One problem for all farmers: the rising cost of fertilizer, which has nearly doubled in the last year, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Prices have increased because the world demand for fertilizer is outstripping the supply, said Kathy Mathers, spokeswoman for the Fertilizer Institute, a Washington, D.C., trade group.
That's been made worse by the increased cost in shipping fertilizer around the world and the low value of the dollar, she said.
Many other farming costs are rising too.
The price of the diesel fuel that is used to run combines and tractors has jumped by half from a year ago, according to the USDA. Seed prices have risen more than 25% from last year, the USDA said.
Farmers are also dealing with higher rents, as landowners demand their slice of increased food prices.
Indeed, the rent for some of Osterkamp's land has jumped to $250 an acre this year, up from $175 a year ago.
Steve Dennis, who farms 6,000 acres of rice, wheat, almonds and walnuts in Colusa and Glenn counties, is also changing fertilizers in response to soaring prices for farm additives and chemicals.
A year ago, Dennis paid $500 a ton for the fertilizer he uses on rice. He is spending $1,300 a ton this year, prompting him to switch to an inferior compound that sells for less. The switch will save him as much as $130,000 this year.
Dennis also is hedging his bets by planting about 500 acres of wheat because it uses less water than rice.
I'm "paying a lot closer attention to the numbers," he said. "I am trying to get by with a little less of this and a little less of that."
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jerry.hirsch@latimes.com
