Idaho Ag Revenue Up

Idaho ad revenues up. I talked with University of Idaho Extension economist Garth Taylor: “Idaho will post record-high farm gate receipts for a fourth consecutive year in 2014, bucking the national trend of declining farm revenue. Oh you bet. We are going in a different direction in Idaho. The national trend is for farm income, that’s not cash receipts, farm income was down 21% they are forecasting for U.S. farm income. That’s just a big swoon in corn and soybean prices. You know that Idaho doesn’t grow much corn nor any soybeans. We are a milk and livestock driven state. We have record high prices for milk this year and record high prices for beef. We are just on a different track. We just blew the gates off of things and it is on the back of our livestock sector. This despite some real big down trends. Our barley just got rained on so badly and much of it destroyed. Much of the hay crop in eastern Idaho was destroyed. They just simply didn’t harvest it. Drought is good for farmers as long as it happens to you.