Derek Day, director of the Person County Cooperative Extension Service Office, said Friday that, although the county had received some much-needed rain over the past week, the long-term outlook for farming and crops is not good.

He said that the major weather services were predicting another dry year in 2008, and the cumulative effect of five dry years would take its toll. The last “wet year,” Day said, was in 2003.

“We already have empty ponds and low streams,” he said, “and the long-term weather services are saying the drought will extend to next summer. The outlook is not good.”

The rain received over the past week, said Day, amounted to anywhere from six tenths of an inch in western sections of the county to one and one-half inches in the east.

“Short-term,” he said, “it’s given wheat and other small-grain crops a boost and has put a little water back into the streams. But long-term,” Day said, “it’s still not done anything.”

The drought, coupled with skyrocketing fuel and fertilizer prices, he explained, is forcing some farmers to consider getting out of the business.

“The only thing buoying farmers right now,” he said, “is decent grain prices, but when that market corrects, there’s nothing” to count on.

Fertilizer prices, largely tied to rising energy costs, have more than doubled over the past year, Day said. And, at tobacco harvest time this year, propane for curing barns was about $1.50 a gallon. At harvest time 2008, “it may be $2,” he speculated, “and that is not being taken into account in commodity prices.”

Some farmers, according to Day, are saying “that they haven’t made much the past two years because expenses have increased” so much. Yet another year of higher costs and little rainfall, which translates to smaller yields, he said, will likely force many off the land.

Day plans to hold the Extension office’s annual tobacco meeting on Jan. 9, when, he said, “We will talk about variety, [of plants] fertilizer and disease control, and we will talk some economics.”

Contract tobacco prices for next year have been released, Day said, and reflect only “a nominal increase” over 2007 prices.

The annual tobacco meeting will be held at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 9, in the Person County Office Building auditorium, Day said. Those who plan to attend should call the Extension office, at 599-1195, by Jan. 4 to reserve a spot.