What follows is a preview of the 2009 crop season for local farmers: ???????????????????????

Okay, maybe there is more certainty to farming than a long line of question marks. But as every farmer knows, each crop season brings a different and wholly unpredictable set of circumstances on the farm. How much rain will we get? And when will we get it?

What new disease or pest that hasn’t been a problem in the past will rear its ugly head this year and cost us bushels per acre? Will that combine or tractor that probably needs to be replaced hold out another season?

But there’s one question that farmers usually worry about that takes a different turn this year. No, it’s not “Will my bank stick with me for another year?” but rather “Will my bank still be in business at the end of the year?”

From year to year, the usual travails of farming give it the stability of a Hollywood marriage, but in the tough economic times we’re facing, farming might well be one of the most stable staples of our economy.

Even in tough times, people have to eat, and for the country to eat, farmers have to produce the food.

Actually, though farmers are notorious complainers (if complaining were an Olympic sport, I guarantee the United States team would be full of farmers, and we’d win the gold every four years) it’s hard to find much to complain about on the farm in light of what's going on around the country right now.

Yes, prices have gone down, but from historic highs, from prices that five years ago farmers in their wildest imaginations couldn’t have foreseen. I can remember my dad talking about “$3” corn like it was something about as likely as hitting the lottery. Now, farmers complain when the price of corn begins with something less than a “4.”

True, prices for inputs like fertilizer and seed are also high and haven’t come down as much as the price of grain has fallen, but farmers should be better positioned to pay those prices than they were a few years ago given the prices they’ve been able to sell for over the last two or three years.

Even the bad economy has helped the farmer. The unbelievably low interest rates that have come about in an attempt to spur lending has lowered the farmers’ cost to borrow operating capital.

And farmers aren’t getting laid off left and right like workers just about everywhere else. In fact, people with money to invest in something are still hot on the trail of farmland available for purchase.

In fact, given the state of the economy right now, farmers probably have a lot less to complain about than the average person.

But that will last until the first big rain in late April knocks the planter out of the field for a few days. Some things never change.

Mike Myers is the assistant sports editor at the Times-Herald. He also helps his family operate a large grain farm west of Cornettsville. Some of the first toys purchased for his twin boys were of course — tractors.