Food Prices, Cyber Attacks, and Big Farms Getting Bigger
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp on the Ag Information Network.
The official numbers are in and food prices rose 9.9% last year. It was the highest annual rate since 1979 and the jumps were across the board. Matt MacLachlan, a research economist with the USDA’s Economic Research Service, says prices will still be on the rise here in 2023, but the graph is expected to show a more shallow slope…
“We still expect prices to increase, albeit at headline levels typically lower than last year.”
Meanwhile, food giant Dole says it recently was hit by a cyberattack that was determined to be ransomware. It disrupted the company’s operations and resulted in the temporary shutdown of production plants and food shipments.
And the biggest getting bigger. USDA’s annual Farms and Land in Farms Report shows that the number of farms in the $1 million or more sales category increased. Farms in every other sales category either decreased or remained the same size. Now the country’s largest farms with sales of $1 million or more operate nearly 26 percent of U.S. farmlands. These USDA says the average farm size for 2022 was 446 acres, up from 445 acres in 2021.
