Cash Rents Challenge

Agricultural economist with DTN/ The Progressive Farmer, Katie Micik, points to a problem that many farmers are facing. "Cash rents which have been very stubborn in sticking at those high levels, producers are really hoping to get those down and they are finding it rather difficult. Farmers who rent a portion of their ground from say, the lady down the street or from another farmer, there are different types of land arrangements out there, if you don't own all of your production ground. They are farmers who are leasing land. They are the ones that are saying my rent per acre may be higher than my ability to break even with the current commodity prices. That's the gloom and doom. Give me something to look forward to... Anything? Unfortunately, we are seeing everything stay relatively consistent at this low level. When we look at incomes, producers are saying that they are normal too bad and more are saying bad than normal by a slight margin. When they look at the year ahead for inputs and income, a lot of farmers just expected to stay the same. There are some people who think it will get worse, some think it will get better but the majority expect not much change in the year ahead. My conversations with farmers show that farmers are just settling in and trying to adjust to this down cycle that there is in the current agriculture economy. They are trying to do everything that they can to get the biggest yield for the lowest amount of money."