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Naig: Uncertainty growing for producers

Iowa Ag Secretary Mike Naig says producers face several headwinds as winter approaches.

“Inflation continues to impact all of us as consumers, but certainly impacts the farm community. We have higher cost of capital, interest rates on the rise, and yet we dragged some of those higher input prices of fertilizer and chemical and equipment costs and fuel costs with us into this year.”

He tells Brownfield volatility in the commodity markets is another concern.

“Now we’ve seen a slight reduction in commodity prices and so that’s of course a very problematic scenario is when you drag those higher input costs along and then run into those lower commodity prices. That’s a cliff that none of us want to see.”

And, Naig says there continues to be some uncertainty around the 2023 Farm Bill.