farm economy

USDA’s annual Farms and Land in Farms Report shows the country’s largest farms with sales of $1 million or more operate nearly 26% of all American farmlands.  The agency also says there were 2.003 million farms in the nation during 2022, a drop of 0.5 percentage points f...

Tractor unit sales in both the U.S. and Canada remain near their five-year average while combine harvesters in both countries continue triple-digit growth.   The latest data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers released this week shows that overall U.S. a...

The latest federal data shows that in 2021, the U.S. food and beverage manufacturing sector employed 1.7 million people, or more than 1.1% of all U.S. nonfarm employment.  Within the U.S. manufacturing sector, food and beverage manufacturing employees accounted for the largest share of employees, 15.4%.  Acco...

Throughout much of 2022 and into this year, much of the financial concern for the ag industry was input costs that were climbing at significant rates.  But now, those concerns don’t seem to be so loud.  The Idaho Cattlemen’s Cameron Mulrony said diesel prices are a great example.   “It seemed to stabiliz...

After three straight months of readings slightly above growth neutral, the Creighton University Rural Mainstreet Index fell below the growth neutral threshold.  The March index slumped from 50.1 in February to a reading of 45.6 in March.  Despite...

As part of the National Ag Day Celebration this week, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture released its annual Feeding the Economy Report.  The data shows food and agriculture industries and their suppliers contribute over $8.6 trillio...

One of the serious issues for beginning, small, or underserved farmers is the lack of access to credit.  And ask anyone who’s farmed for a while, without credit, it's almost impossible for any farmer to make it.   “This is what I feel like I was brought to the agency for is to help improve access to credit especially to those underserved populations.”   FSA Adminis...

The Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer dropped five points to 125 in February.  Farmers’ perspectives regarding both current conditions on their farms and their expectations for the future also weakened during the month.  The Index of ...

USDA’s March crop production reports and supply and demand estimates showed minor changes this week.  The U.S. orange production forecast rose slightly month over month, yet will still be down 25% year over year.    Turning to domestic commodity balance sheets, an upward adjustment in ending stocks for corn led to a decrease of 10 cents to the season ending average price, now at $6.60 a bushel. 

The U.S. economy will progressively slow through the first half of this year, and recession fears are still high, and warranted.  That assessment from CoBank, adding inflation is starting to loosen its grip on farm country.  While a slowing economy does mean that impact of inflation is expected to diminish, that also means the crop prices, and lesser extent livestock prices producers receive in 20