A former economist for the House Ag Committee is weighing in on the current ag economy. He says when it comes to inflation, the numbers may be improving, but farmers and ranchers still have a tough road ahead.
“It’s hard for me not to chuckle when I hear about inflation stabilizing. A 2% year over year inflation, or you know, close to it, that we ended up in August, well, that’s great that inflation is slowing, but when you look at where it’s gone over the last five years, that’s very little comfort, right? Growers are still in the middle of navigating all of that, and they’re doing that against this prospect of prices that are that are significantly declining. So whether it’s an old crop that you’re figuring how to market or whether you’re starting to look at how you’re going to cash flow into the new year, there’s a whole lot of alarm bells on the horizon right now,” said Dr. Bart Fischer.
High input costs are only complicating the matter. The former American Soybean Association president says he is taking lessons learned years ago.
“One thing that we learned from the ‘70s and ‘80s is that once prices start to increase, we get to a point where it’s hard to ever push them back down,” said Wade Cowan.
A recent poll shows more than 50 percent of ag analysts believe the ag economy is in a recession. While input costs are contributing, they believe it is mostly because of low crop prices.
