farming, chances are
he
If Jim Etsch is not
farming, chances are
he’s out promoting it
By tara petersen
Staff Writer
FARRAH MAFFAI Jim Etsch picks some fresh corn at his farm in Monroe. Etsch was recently named Farmer of the Year in Middlesex County in part due to his efforts to promote farming and agriculture.
MONROE — Jim Etsch, standing dwarfed by thousands of rows of corn, peels back the silk of one ear and speaks about it as if it were a faithful friend.
"This ear here is perfect for [Mexican] tamales," he says, squeezing a kernel. "We do pick-your-own for 10 cents an ear. I make 10 times what I can make selling it as feed corn."
Etsch, 43, who was recently named the Middlesex County Farmer of the Year, explained that selling his feed corn for human consumption is one of many possibilities for supplementing his normal business, which is to sell dried kernels of corn to be ground and converted to horse feed. He also farms around 150,000 bales of hay and straw annually, which he says, unlike corn, "helps keep the cash flow all year long."
Etsch Farms, off Route 522, is run by Jim and his father, Roy, on some of the same land that was purchased by his grandfather in 1930 for potato and string bean farming, he said. Out of the 1,100 acres farmed on four separate properties, Etsch said he owns around 200 acres — the balance is rented year by year.
Etsch recently purchased 88 of the acres with the money he made through the sale of more than 100 acres to the Toll Brothers development firm.
People who complain about losing open space to a developer are often unknowingly hypocritical, he said.
"It irks me that people buy their houses out here and get upset at the noise and dust [because of farming]. Then they are against new developments, but they wouldn’t have been able to move here if it weren’t for a developer," he said.
Etsch said selling farmland to developers has not hurt the industry as much as many people think, since modern techniques and machinery can produce a much higher yield per acre than years ago.
"[We farm] almost 1,000 acres of corn and it’s myself and my father, and he’s 75 [years old]," Etsch said.
Etsch has two employees assisting with the hay and straw business.
He estimated that the approximately 130 bushels of corn per acre he’s capable of producing now is around triple the yield of what they did in the 1950s when farming was much less mechanical. He also said that government research conducted in the 1960s and 1970s on hybrid production really improved productivity.
He currently produces around 100,000 bushels annually, he said.
"I don’t believe [grain farming] is a dead industry, it’s just going to be a concentrated industry," he said.
Etsch, who earned a bachelor of science degree in agricultural sciences at Cook College of Rutgers University, New Brunswick, keeps his yield high by using a "no-till, non-irrigated" method, which he said "disturbs only around 2 inches of soil and cuts erosion by 95 percent."
Etsch’s Farmer of the Year title, given to him at the recent Middlesex County Fair, is more about his agricultural advocacy efforts than for his farming ability, he said. He is an alternate to the Farm Bureau’s Board of Directors, a former president of the Middlesex County Board of Agriculture, and president of the New Jersey Agricultural Experimental Station.
He spends his free time promoting agriculture and attending various meetings, sometimes three nights per week. He also has a wife and two sons, Zachary, 12, and Peter, 10.
"The hum of the combine [machine] always put my youngest son to sleep [when he was younger]. He’d lay under my legs and sleep for hours while I cut corn," Etsch said.
His wife of 14 years, Caroline, always tries to make the busy harvest time more bearable, he said.
"She’ll make dinner and bring it out to the fields for the whole family. We’d sit on the hatch of the car and eat together," Etsch said.
The earnings each year vary, he said, and can take some getting used to.
"You’re not going to make money every year. You have to work on averages," Etsch said.
He also said that he invests nearly all the money made during a profitable year back into the farm.
"If I’ve got enough money to take my wife and kids to a movie, I’m happy. I don’t need a lot," he said.
This year, he said, he’d be lucky to break even, because the spring was so cold and wet, and corn prices are low.
"I had 150 acres rot in the ground," Etsch said.
Feed corn is under-appreciated, he said, because it is a common misconception that sweet corn is used for many processed foods.
"Look at almost any product on a grocery shelf — corn oil, corn starch, corn meal — they are all made from feed corn," he said.
Etsch supports farmland preservation policies of late, but feels the government can do more to ensure long-term success in farming.
"We spend a lot of money in this state to preserve farmland, but we also have to preserve the farmer on that land by making it a profitable venture," he said.
Etsch, who is president of the Garden State Ethanol Project, suggested capitalizing on available direct markets and creating new markets such as the conversion of fermented corn into ethanol, which would be used to manufacture cleaner-burning gasoline.
He also said he supports the idea that farmers should qualify for "carbon credits" since crops absorb carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from the air.
Etsch said he is hesitant to commit his farm to the state preservation program because "I don’t want to force [my children] into a farming career."
Though Etsch said he hopes his sons are interested in farming, he will encourage them to decide for themselves. He noted, however, that he will never retire.
"I wouldn’t know what to do with myself," he said.