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Corn acres, farm income may rise

The Food and Ag Policy Research Institute outlook seems to agree with USDA’s outlook that there will be a greater shift to corn acreage planted this season.

“We’ve got a little bit better demand picture in front of us on the corn side with a little bit of growth in ethanol demand, perhaps some strength in exports longer term,” says Pat Westhoff, co-director of the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute, in an interview with Brownfield. “Those two things combined, we think, we’ll probably give us more of an incentive to plant some corn acres this spring.”

AUDIO: Pat Westhoff (3 min. MP3)

There may be slightly greater income from the farm this year as well, according to Westhoff.

“We built our projections on the assumption that we’re going to get at least a little bit of recovery in the general economy. That lets us have a bit stronger demand for livestock around the world; that gives us some support for demand for crops as well that will be used to feed that livestock,” said Westhoff, “so we do look for a little bit better farm income picture in 2010, but contingent on that recovery in the general economy.”

Westhoff says farm income could recover by $10 billion this year, which is about a third of the last year’s drop in farm income. He says that $30 billion decline is consistent with 2009’s weakening general economy.

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