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Ag Economy Barometer: producer sentiment is up

Farmers are optimistic in the ag economy despite the challenging growing season, according to the latest Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer.

Jim Mintert, director of Purdue’s Center for Commercial Agriculture, says improving crop conditions and an early summer crop price rally boosted producer sentiment.

“The planting season has essentially ended, and I think that created some positive feelings to finally get this very difficult planting season behind them,” he says. “The second thing was, if you go back and look at the prices when we were collecting data in mid-July that was pretty close the peak of future prices for both corn and soybean prices.”

The latest barometer jumped to 153 in July. The Index of Current Conditions increased 44 points to 141, the largest one-month improvement since the survey started in 2015. The Index of Future Expectations jumped 18 points to 159 last month.

He tells Brownfield farmers reported large prevented planting acreage.

“Twenty-five percent of corn farmers in our survey said they intended to take a prevented planting payment on corn,” he says. “On the soybean side, 24% said they intended to take a prevented planting payment.”

Of the surveyed farmers who said they enrolled in prevented planting, about 60 percent of corn farmers said they would take a payment on 15% or more of their intended acreage. Nearly 40 percent of soybean growers said they would take a payment on 15-25% percent.

“I don’t think you can take our numbers and translate that directly into how many acres were enrolled in the prevented planting program this year, but it does confirm that the prevented planting acreage for both corn and soybeans was quite large,” he says.

The survey of 400 agricultural producers across the U.S. was taken before the Market Facilitation Program payment rates were announced.    

Audio: Jim Mintert, Purdue University