State of the U.S. Farm Economy in Late 2023

During a recent webinar, the staff at Agricultural Economic Insights looked into the current economic conditions in agriculture and what might be coming in 2024. Brent Gloy, co-founder of AEI, says the last three years have seen an above-average farm economy.

“This surprised me a little bit. USDA just adjusted the 2022 net farm income to the all-time record high in 2022. Now it surprised me a little bit. I know, on our farm, it was probably our best year ever. We had very high prices for commodities, and we had quite a bit of government farm program payments in that year. So, it was a very good year.”

“2023 is forecast to be down a bit but still at a high level. As we're going into this situation that we're watching right now, where we're starting to see commodity prices fall substantially, we're coming off of three pretty good years, and I think that's important to remember.”