Cotton

The combination of high interest rates and a strong U.S. dollar is beginning to take a disproportionate toll on rural industries like agriculture, forest products, mining and manufacturing.

The impact of drought conditions across much of the Corn Belt on crops and water transportation were a common theme in the Federal Reserve’s recent survey.

Agricultural conditions were somewhat mixed, with drought conditions and lower commodity prices reported in parts of the Corn Belt, according to survey results in the Federal Reserve’s “Beige Book.”

When agriculture began at the end of the Stone Age, the world had approximately 5 million people to feed, and few, if any, farmers were feeding people beyond their extended family.

I sit down to pen this column having just finished packing my suitcase for the days I will spend at the Farm Progress Show. When you read my words, I will be headed home from this annual farm show.

A shortage of food and energy should be coming sooner than later. I fully expect the final quarter of this year and into late 2025 to be a period marked by rising prices for those two basic markets.

There was a time when the USDA's August Crop Production report was more feared by American farmers than any paste-colored Soviet leader with a shaky finger near the nuclear launch button.

A group of Brazilian agronomists, landowners and input industry representatives visited several locations in Illinois that included stops at the Illinois State University Farm, Bayer research facilities and John Deere.

After plowing through a new USDA report titled “Concentration and Competition in U.S. Agribusiness,” I asked an agronomist friend why it seemed that its writers used so much “hem-and-haw” language.

Agricultural conditions were reported to be stable to strong across the Corn Belt, according a survey of Federal Reserve districts.

Agriculture conditions were flat to slightly improved across Corn Belt Federal Reserve districts, the Beige Book reported. The survey-based Beige Book publication summarizes comments received from contacts outside the Federal Reserve System.

If there is a concept that we have talked about more than any other over the last 22 years, it is the idea that crop agriculture experiences long periods of low prices punctuated by short periods of high prices.

Farmers Business Network released its first Fertilizer Price Transparency Report, an in-depth examination of how rapidly increasing fertilizer prices will impact farmers’ application rates this fall and planting decisions next year.

The Federal Reserve is finding it harder to cool the economy than almost anyone expected. Most corners of the U.S. economy are performing very well considering the Fed has been aggressively raising rates for seven months.

The cotton harvest is about to get underway in the Texas High Plains, the windswept region that grows most of the crop in the nation’s top cotton-producing state. But Barry Evans, like many others, has already walked away from more than 2,000 acres of his bone-dry fields.