U.S. agriculture has seen its share of challenges this year, and as 2023 winds down, ag economists are looking back on some of the largest hurdles.
“One of the things we’re going to keep an eye on is acreage. There’s always an acreage reallocation, and one of the things that happened in 2023 in our observation is that we had a lot of corn acres and a little bit of soybean acres, and that’s resulted in this imbalance in ending stocks. So, corn ending stocks are above the long-run average, closer to 15 percent instead of the average of 13. Soybeans are closer to five or six percent instead of a long-run average of eight. So, we’re gonna see some acreage reallocation, so producers are gonna need to keep an eye on that relative price ratio and how that’s gonna impact their budgets. Also, we’re keeping an eye on fertilizer. Fertilizers came down a lot, and that’s going to benefit corn budgets quite a bit,” said David Widmar.
A recent USDA report showed prices of fertilizer, chemicals, and seeds are going down, and those declines should help offset other increases.
