VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — It’s a humble lifestyle, from the outside. But Mike Cullipher will be the first to tell you: farming is no walk in the park.
"The old saying is: don’t worry about what you can’t control, but you’ve got to think about it," Cullipher said.
He describes it as a balancing act, one that’s become more costly in recent months. There are a few guarantees when it comes to farming as many as 250 acres of land in Pungo. Time, sweat, and a lot of fertilizer.
Now, fertilizer prices are up for farmers across the country, making it more expensive to grow the crops you might see off Virginia Beach's Princess Anne Road. It's a blow for smaller produce farms like Cullipher's. His farm runs through hundreds of pounds of fertilizer a year to stay in business.
Just one example Cullipher provided, is the price of liquid nitrogen.
"In 2021, give or take it was $250 to $275 a ton. Two months to a month ago, it was $630 to $670 per ton," he said.
Higher costs for farmers, could mean higher costs for families at checkout.
"Our expenses are up 30 to 40%. On average, we’ve increased our prices 15 to 20%," Cullipher said.
He said passing entirely all of those price increase on to his customers wouldn't be fair and would price him out of the market. So for the time being, farmers like Cullipher might be absorbing the cost of those rising prices, ultimately impacting their bottom dollar.
"Reality is, we have to absorb that, and hope for next year to be better," Cullipher said.