Few people want to talk about quitting the farm but just about every farmer knows of someone who could be packing it in this year.

"You’re going to have some guys gone this spring," said crop farmer Allan Cole. But we won’t know who they are, he figures, until they run out of credit options or when the neighbours see there’s no crop in the ground.

He knows of one neighbour who returned two tractors to a dealer in late January. "He couldn’t make the payments."

Another neighbour bought a cement truck and told Cole that he loses money every time he drives the combine but he makes money every time he drives home with the cement truck. If low commodity prices continue "this guy will be driving the cement truck and to hell with the corn planter," Cole said.

Cole has his own future to consider. At 54, the Northumberland County farmer with 1,000 acres north of Cobourg, has three grown children who don’t want to farm and "I don’t want to be a greeter at Wal-Mart."

He says he’s too old to find a new line of work but not the guys up to age 40. Those guys are young enough to be hired elsewhere and they’re the guys who will be quitting first, he said.

"There are a lot of people thinking of quitting," Said Curran dairy farmer Reg Presley. "But they don’t want to talk about it."

Lanark County crop farmer Alvin Dobbie said that unless the governments come up with a plan, farmers will see an exodus over the next few years. "We haven’t actually seen it (exodus in farming) yet," he said.

Near Bowmanville, Alan Shwarz, of J. Shwarz Livestock, says it’s the dairy farmers who are first to leave the industry. The future is uncertain and they’re leaving on a high, he said. "When quota hits the magic number of $30,000 (per kilo) more guys will leave. Our neighbours are leaving left, right and centre."

About 300 Ontario dairy farmers leave the industry each year. "It’s a pretty consistent trend," said Dairy Farmers of Ontario spokesman Bill Mitchell. There were 7,973 dairy farmers in 1995. That number dipped below 5,000 for the first time last year. As of October the DFO recorded 4,971 dairy farmers in Ontario, including 2,055 who farm east of Toronto.