Bring on 2010

 Garth Taylor is a Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology economist at the University of Idaho. I’ve known him for over a year, interviewed him several times and have never found him to be wrong. Guess what. He’s predicting better things for 2010. Listen, this is encouraging. “The worst is past Dave, the worst is past. We’re back up to $15 milk or plus and we had times in there it was $11. What ever’s gone is gone. Banks are starting to loan to dairies again and they’re starting to allow them to build up an inventory of feed where it was just week to week basis so it’s not great but at least we’re not hemorrhaging cash like we were before. Our bi bright spots for this year are sugar beets. We’re up by over half in sugar beet revenues this year. It’s not that last year that sugar beets weren’t profitable it’s just that so many crops were more profitable. People are getting more for wheat and sileage for the dairies and alfalfa hay. This last year when those prices for those crops dropped those sugar beet farmers returned in droves and so we’re up really well. Garth also pointed out there were record high yields of potatoes in 2009.