The News Isn't All Bad - Read the Summary

The news these days is hard to listen to, hard to read and most days it's hard to stomach. But there is one thing you need to read, and it's all about you.

You may have noticed that we posted the 30 page report The 2008/2009 World Economic Crisis - What it Means for Agriculture yesterday. Did I hear you snoring?

So, who has time to read the whole 30 pages? We're not sure, and that's why today we posted the authors' 3 page summary in our news section Summary: What the 2008/09 Economic Crisis Means for Agriculture

We even broke the summary up into easily digestible topics. And, who knows you might find time to sit down and read the whole thing -- and stay awake. Remember, if I had said 3 pages at the beginning instead of 30 then you would have thought that was too much, right?

And, yes, to answer your question, the summary does note a few positive points:

• The projected decline in farm income in 2009 is not expected to have much effect on national agricultural land values.
• ...producers will benefit from lower input costs implied by reduced energy and fuel prices. This report projects that in 2009, the fuel and energy-related input costs faced by U.S. farmers could decline by 30 percent, returning costs to the levels of 2006.
• Macroeconomic forecasters, such as Global Insight and EIU, predict that the U.S. and world economies should stabilize in 2010 and then resume growth in 2011 near the relatively high rates of the early 2000s.
• ...reference analysis projects that by 2013, U.S. net farm income could rise to $83 billion, though agricultural exports are projected to be only $93 billion, largely unchanged from the projected 2009 value of $96 billion because of the higher value of the dollar.
• Economic growth would partially reverse the effects of the crisis and thereby help producers of corn and other biofuel feedstock crops.
• Second possible scenario - the weaker dollar relative to the reference case will strengthen U.S. farmers’ competitiveness on world markets. With a weaker dollar, projected net farm income will increase by 19 percent to $106 billion in 2013 and to $118 billion in 2017, while agricultural exports will rise to $120 billion in 2013 and $134 billion in 2017.

Thanks for reading.
Debra