Inflation starting to affect the farming process

RIGBY, Idaho (KIFI)- The rising costs for transporting and growing Idaho's most famous vegetable is now starting to reach every level of the farming process.

Andrew Mickelson, the managing partner for Mickelson farms, says unfortunately rising prices does not nearly mean as much goes back to the farmers.

"As food prices go up, it's generally not going to the farmer nearly as much as going to everybody in between," Mickelson said. He says the prices of potatoes rising is in part due to the rising costs in the crops favorite food. "We're seeing our fertilizer prices going up two fold. So we're paying twice as much for fertilizer fuel. We're paying four times what we were paying two years ago."

He says overall we could see an increase as much as "25 to 50% increase here on the farm level. Here at the shed, we'll see probably at least another 25%. And so to the consumer, by the time it gets them by the time it goes to trucking in the grocery stores, consumers could be paying twice as much for the food as they were a year ago."

Despite the rise in costs farmers are still not seeing as much of the profits of the sales come back to them. "A lot of these studies show that when you go and pay for your Thanksgiving dinner, the farmers just getting a little tiny piece of that ten to 20%," Mickelson said. He also adds it rounds out to approximately 7 cents for every dollar of tubers sold.

Mickelson says there still is a way for us to help out our local farmers.

"To buy fresh buy, local buy American. Anything you can do that way to help us. We're finding lots of ways to get it directly to the consumer which also gets the money directly back to the farmers."