News

Farmer sentiment “less pessimistic” in future

Farmer sentiment rose in November – and is reflected in the Purdue/CME Group Ag Economy barometer.

Jim Mintert, director of Purdue University’s Center for commercial agriculture tells Brownfield farmers surveyed showed significant improvement in future expectations, “People became more optimistic, or actually, if you look very carefully at the responses, maybe less pessimistic about the future in agriculture.”

He says increased prices explain a good chunk of that – with the rally in near-bys and beyond, “Look at the November 2017 soybean futures, those are up in the ballpark of 15% since their late summer, late August/early September lows. Probably spilled over and gave us a little more optimism about the future than we would have had otherwise.”

He says the index for November is 116, the highest since the fall of 2015.  The average index is 100.