By SHELLY STRAUTZ-SPRINGBORN
Michigan Correspondent

LANSING, Mich. — A ban on deer baiting in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula is resulting in a decline of big bucks in more ways than one this deer-hunting season.

Gerald Malburg of Hart has been selling carrots, sugar beets and corn for deer bait for about 10 years. This year he stands to lose his entire sugar beet crop income as well as income from his cull carrots due to the deer-baiting ban.

“We raise sugar beets just for deer feed,” Malburg said. “It costs us $550 to $600 an acre to raise sugar beets. We raise anywhere from 160 to 180 acres each year.”

To make matters worse, the beets Malburg grows are fodder beets, so they cannot be shipped to a sugar company to be refined into sugar. “These are primarily for animal consumption,” he said.

While the majority of his carrots are sold for fresh consumption, he said cull carrots – those that are unacceptable for food due to size – are sold to hunters as bait. He estimated that 2,000 tons of carrots are culled each year for deer feed.

“We figure 40 to 47 percent of the carrots are culls,” he said. “Deer feed has been our only market for them.”

Malburg said the ban is bad timing for the farmers and for the state’s economy. “It has been a cash flow for us from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15,” he said. “The economic impact to Michigan is going to be tremendous.

“These crops were planted in April or May and are ready to harvest. We have all the cost into it. It’s like working for half a year and going to get your paycheck and it’s not there.”

The ban went into effect in late August after a captive deer in northern Kent County was found to have infectious chronic wasting disease. It was the first case found in Michigan of the fatal neurological disease that has spread from western states through Wisconsin in the last 20 years. It affects deer, elk and moose.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources issued the ban because congregating deer at bait sites increases the chances of spreading the disease. According to Michigan Farm Bureau Commodity Specialist Ken Nye, the ban on deer feeding could add up to $10 million dollars or more in commodity losses for farmers this year.

“Nobody knows exactly what the value of this is because there are no statistics in this sector of the industry,” he said. “With all the people involved in brokering and moving these commodities around, it’s a real unknown.”

He said a number of crops, however, could be impacted. “If you look at the commodities that are used for feed and bait, you come up with a list of things – carrots, sugar beets, apples, corn and other miscellaneous vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, squash, pumpkins and probably a little hay,” Nye said.

He agreed that the timing for the ban couldn’t be worse.
“This is pretty significant. In the grand scheme of agriculture, it’s not really big, but to the individual grower, it’s pretty significant,” he said. “The timing is absolutely the worst possible.”