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Farmers, ranchers
face high costs, low T
supply for materials
By RONALD BOND, BENNETT HALL,
JOHN TILLMAN AND JAYSON JACOBY
EO Media Group
rying to acquire items as sim-
ple as metal corral panels can
be hard enough in 2022, rancher
Dean Defrees laments.
But actually fi nding them can be
even worse.
Well, sort of.
The combination of a supply chain
that’s missing more than a few links,
and the highest infl ation rates in more
Wheat lines the edge of a fi eld on June 23, 2021, as a combine
harvester harvests at Starvation Farms outside of Lexington.
The farm produced a harvest of 60-70% of average in the wake
of the 2021 heat wave and drought.
East Oregonian, File
than four decades, has created quite a
conundrum for ranchers and farmers,
said Defrees, whose family has been
raising cattle in the Sumpter Valley
southwest of Baker City for more than
a century.
Although Defrees is fortunate in one
sense — he doesn’t raise hay and doesn’t
use fertilizer, a product that has been in
short supply — he said he still wonders
what would happen if a tractor or other
piece of equipment broke down.
See Supply, Page 5