input costs

Idaho potato growers are hopeful 2023 will be much improved over last year for a variety of reasons.  Jamey Higham, Executive Director of the Idaho Potato Commission said producers faced a number of difficult challenges last year.  One of the more interesting one occurred late in the year, when rumors started the Idaho potato growers ran out of spuds.  Higham said despi...

As Canadian farmers plan their operating costs for another planting season, a major consideration is the extremely high cost of fertilizer inputs.  This past spring already expensive fertilizer prices took another last-minute increase when the Canadian government announced import tariff charges just weeks before planting season.  ...

As we get ready for another growing season, many farmers across the PNW are concerned about fertilizer availability and prices in the year ahead.  Helena's Dawn Brunmeier has tips to keep your commodities strong and your costs down.       If you have a story idea for the PNW Ag Network, call (509) 547-9791, or e-mail glenn.vaagen@townsquareme...

After earning record high incomes last year, even while dealing with an 11% hike in production expenses, the nation's farmers this year could see another increase in those expenses.  ERS head Spiro Stefanou said they expect a more modest increase of as much as 4% this year.  He adde...

Balancing the farm books can be challenging to say the least.  On one hand, you don’t want to spend money you don’t need to, but conversely, you want to give your commodity the best chance for success.  In the ongoing challenge to find that happy medium, Bio Huma Netics said they have the right combination of cost saving products, and soil health improving materials to help a variety of growers ac

For milk and most dairy products, “prices have started to decline, quicker than we had expected,” noted USDA outlook board chairman Mark Jekanowski.  He added it's a combination of continued increases in milk and dairy production plus weak demand and pretty strong international competition.   So far all of 2023 com...

America’s dairy producers and processors are closely watching discussions about the next Farm Bill and looking for reforms to Federal Milk Marketing Orders.  CoBank said the industry feels that current FMMOs don’t reflect today’s market environment, and the consequences could be drastic.   Make allowances ar...

Farm lending activity continued to gradually increase along with further growth in loan sizes.  The Kansas City Federal Reserve says the average size of non-real estate farm loans was about 20% higher than a year ago and drove an increase in lending volumes for the fourth straight quarter.  Average...

In some ways, 2023 will be very similar to 2022 when it comes to the farm economy.  But in other ways, it’s expected to be very different.  One of those differences will be the supply chain, which has made strong improvements over the past 3-4 months, removing some of the uncertainty farmers faced last year.  And input costs, includ...

Fertilizer and other input shortages were a big topic of conversation and headlines in 2022.  Jason Troendle, economist with The Fertilizer Institute, said the 2022 supplies were a little lower than normal but maybe weren’t quite that bad.   “When ...