USDA’s latest ag trade forecast shows yet another drop, this time around $4 billion for the year. It is disappointing news, but economists are not surprised.
Ag exports have been falling since 2022, which is around the same time farmers saw record income levels. Those days are long gone but economists say there is a strong connection between the two.
“Farm income is a mix of a lot of different things. You know, corn, beans, wheat, cotton, and rice, but there are horticultural products and livestock products, all of those things filter into farm income, but commodity prices are obviously a key factor in determining a chunk of farm income. We’ve seen commodity prices come down from their highs of 22, which is also when we saw our peak export value. So as the price of some of our key agricultural exports, so goes our total export value, and that also is a big contributor to farm income,” said USDA’s Seth Meyer.
