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Expectations on 2023 crop input prices  

Farmers gave a somewhat mixed response when asked about 2023 crop input price expectations in the latest Ag Economy Barometer.

Jim Mintert is the director of the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture.

“Ten percent of the people in the survey say that they think input prices to put a crop in the ground in 2023 will decline somewhere between one and 10 percent,” he says. “Nine percent expect to see input prices rise 20 percent or more. The divergence in opinions there is just huge.”  

He tells Brownfield the responses reflect continued uncertainty in the industry.

“None of us really know what’s going to happen—it’s the level of uncertainty out there that is really contributing to the weakness that we’re seeing in farmer sentient,” he says. “Otherwise given the profitability level we’re experiencing; I’d expect to see a much more positive farmer sentiment than what we’re picking up. But, this uncertainty about what’s going to happen with respect to the cost and in turn what that might mean with respect to a cost-price squeeze is what really has people on edge.”

Mintert says producers expect an input price rise that matches up more closely with the rate of inflation.

“Thirty-eight percent, the largest percentage group in the survey response, said that they expect to see input prices next year rise somewhere from 1 to nine percent and if you think about the middle of that, that’s probably in the ballpark of where inflation is likely to be or maybe toward the upper end of that range,” he says.

The Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer is a national monthly survey of 400 U.S. agricultural producers.

Audio: Jim Mintert

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