Federal Reserve Interest Rates Hike

The Federal Reserve increased nation-wide interest rates by a fourth of a percent this week. At the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin Business Conference, Mike North of EverAG says the increase was unavoidable.

“We have an inflation issue that needs to be addressed. We've now put together two successive months of record high year over year, inflation, that wasn't paralleled since the 1980s, when obviously runaway inflation and consequently, much higher interest rates were the standard. And as we look at the broader economy, I think the other thing we have to realize, too, is that we need to see some things kind of brought back into balance.”

“The interest rate is one part of it, but I really do believe that we have to rebalance the supply chain to really stop that, because part of why we're dealing with these prices isn't just about inflation, it's about the compromised state of the flow in our economy. We've got to get the flow of products through our system to be fluid again. The start and stop of product right now, the slowdown at ports, the lack of available trucks and drivers and lack of capacity at processing plants and manufacturing plants, that kind of stuff is having an impact on those prices, too.”

Join us next time for part two, covering how Ukraine factors into this equation.