KNOXVILLE, TN – If history repeats itself, then agriculture knows what lies ahead. The question is now, what will the industry do.
Over the past century, crop markets have experienced long periods of low prices, with interspersed short periods of high prices, but again, marked mostly by lower prices.
This is according to Dr. Harwood D. Schaffer Director of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center at the University of Tennessee, who says if low prices return “as history would suggest, we all need to remember that the current farm programs are not very robust and farm program payments will be not be large enough to come to the rescue”.
So what should farmers and ranchers be doing now in anticipation of tougher economic times?
“Our hope is that most farmers have used the high prices of last year and those projected for the 2021 crop marketing year to pay down their debt and put some money away for the inevitable” Schaffer explains.
(SOURCE: All Ag News)
CREDITS: Policy Pennings Column 1097; Harwood D. Schaffer and Daryll E. Ray, Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, Knoxville, TN; Originally published in MidAmerica Farmer Grower, Vol. 37, No. 343, October 8, 2021