We are about three months away from closing the financial books on 2022.
Economists say despite a record-breaking 21 percent increase in farm cash sales, most is the result of higher prices over the last year. USDA Chief Economist, Seth Meyer says all of the prices the Agency tracks soared.
“Every single one of them higher in these broad categories like fertilizer, fuels and oils, interest feed, pesticides, taxes, labor, and some of them, quite large. Fertilizer increased more than 52 percent year over year as an expense. Fuels and oils up 42 percent, interest up 39 percent, every one of them being a positive increase in expenses,” said Meyer.
Meyer says production expenses are set to go up by 8 percent, but the largest expense eating up farm budgets is the reduction of pandemic and disaster payments by the government. He says those payments are about half of what they were last year.
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