Farm Bill Needed To Mitigate Lower Net Farm Income

American Farm Bureau Federation Chief Economist, Roger Cryan on the net farm cash income drop that he sees for 2024.

“A lot of the farm product prices are lower, the input prices are lower but only a little bit lower there. They don't they don't drop like farming prices for the farmers. farm prices go up and down pretty wildly the input prices, a couple of things like fuel and synthetic fertilizer, those go up and they tend to stay up. And that's kind of a long-term challenge. It won't be the worst year 2024 will be the worst year but it will certainly will be tougher than 2022 and 2023 work.”

Cryan says that AFBF would like to see an updated farm bill to help producers mitigate the lower income levels.

“That provides price reference prices at current market and one of the problems with the current Title One programs are reference prices are constrained. Even with an adjuster that was put into place in the last farm bill, that the reference prices can't go up to more than 115% of the statutory reference prices are set some time ago. Those mean that the Title One programs with traditional commodity programs aren't really doing much. For most crops. It is really important that farmers take a look at their crop insurance options because crop insurance really is become probably the most important thing to protect farmers from low price.”

Roger Cryan, Chief Economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation.