Potato Expo Coming Up
Potato Expo Coming Up. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
The 2013 Potato Expo gets underway next week at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It brings together all the various industries involved in the potato business and features a large tradeshow as well as individual break out session and guest speakers for the general sessions like Dan Manternach, Ag Services Director for Doane Advisory Services of St. Louis.
MANTERNACH: My talk is broken down into 5 components that they specifically asked me to address. One is the outlook for fertilizer, fuel and chemical costs, one is commodity price outlook in general and the impact on land grants, land prices and land availability. A third component is the impact of tax changes that are likely for income tax and estate tax, capital gains, healthcare. Fourth is they’re particularly interested in the agricultural outlook for China. What crop mix will they choose? Will China be growing more potatoes? And if they supply their own QSR’s will we still ship the fries? And number 5 is the prospects for various trade agreements yielding expanded opportunities for potatoes both fresh and frozen.
That is a lot to cover in an hour long talk but Manternach said he looking forward to his discussions with growers. One of the topics people will want to discuss with him is the farm bill extension.
MANTERNACH: They extended the farm bill just 9 months. Basically bought time. But we’re supposed to have a long term farm bill. You know a farm bill is supposed to be a four year farm bill not a 9 month extension so they’re still going to have to debate the elements of that but at least people who are going to be growing crops for 2013 know what the farm program is going to be.
Of course this is just an extension so most everything will remain the same with the exception of direct payments which was one aspect not extended.
MANTERNACH: I think what we’re going to see is not a reversal of the big boom we’ve seen in commodity prices but kind of a leveling off. We’ve gone through a couple of years now where the burden of proof was always on the market bears. In the absence of news the markets would go up. Now we’re back into a stage where the default of the marketplace in the absence of news, the markets go down. So the prices will be more on the defensive. And of course that all depends on what kind of weather we have.
For more information on the upcoming Potato Expo...visit potato-expo.com
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.
