The bleak market has forced farmers to cut expenses anywhere they can.

Tiashoke Farms has 17 employees and typically adds two or three part-timers in the fall. That won’t happen this year.

Health care expenses are steep too—at a cost of roughly $10,000 for a family plan. But Tiashoke and Thomas Poultry continue to provide health insurance for employees, fearing business would suffer if they cut insurance and lost good help.

Besides scaling back on part-time staff, Ziehm also stopped sending trucks, tractors, and other equipment out for repairs.

“We are doing everything in-house that is physically possible,” he said, adding that it’s one of the few expenses he can control.

Those cuts are trickling down to the tractor suppliers and repair companies.

“It’s affecting us at the parts counter, and ultimately it’s going to affect our sales,” said Dick Skellie, general sales manager at Capital Tractor Inc.

One of the popular big-ticket items farmers buy each fall is skid steer loaders at a cost of about $25,000 apiece. Capital Tractor typically sells two dozen skid steers in the fall, but Skellie expects that number to shrink as long as farmers are fearful about taking on new debt for equipment until milk prices rebound.

“I think the biggest impact is yet to come,” said Skellie, who ran his own dairy farm for 40 years before turning it over to his nephew in 2003.

Suppliers, veterinarians, and fertilizer dealers are feeling the impacts as farmers trim spending to survive, Skellie said.

“A downturn like this puts more pressure on the community. I’m paying my bills, but I’m not doing any extra,” Ziehm said.

Fortunately, Capital Tractor protected itself from agriculture down cycles years ago when it began selling more equipment to contractors and homeowners, said company president Jamey Gibson.

Farmers are not only suffering from the national recession. U.S. agriculture exports to China, Australia, and developing countries also have taken a big hit.

The global agriculture downturn is giving more credence to locally grown food marketing efforts undertaken by New York farmers, restaurants, and grocery retailers.

Thomas Poultry’s largest customers have become big promoters of the locally grown produce and dairy items they sell.

Stewart’s Shops Co., which operates 327 convenience stores in New York and Vermont, is a big marketer of locally grown products. The family- and employee-owned chain buys milk from 50 area farms, and all of its eggs come from the Thomases.

The poultry farm also supplies eggs to 18 Hannaford supermarkets, another retailer that promotes its local brands.

Farmers also have benefited from restaurants such as New World Bistro Bar in Albany and others in the region that tout their use of locally grown products. It’s a movement that has helped link some upstate farms to the New York City restaurant market.

Great Performances, a New York City catering company, bought an upstate New York farm in 2006. The 60-acre Katchkie Farm in Kinderhook grows cucumbers, tomatoes, and beets used by catering-company chefs.