What Input Costs Will Remain High In 2025?

It was a reoccurring story for much of the past year; tighter margin for many producers in 2024.  And it’s expected that trend will continue as 2025 starts, due in part to input costs.

“We're seeing commodity prices, which have fallen pretty fast pretty far, pretty quickly, but not all the input prices have done the same and that's kind of where we end up with these tighter margins," said USDA chief economist Seth Meyer.  Meyer said some input costs have come down over the past year, such as fertilizer.  And while those costs aren’t at pre-pandemic levels, he says they have dropped from the spike farmers saw not too long ago.

But when it comes to the input costs that are expected to remain high, and perhaps move even higher, labor.  That’s not something the specialty crop sector of the Northwest wants to hear.

“That's been one of the inputs which is not expected to moderate in price, and that input remained strong," Meyer pointed out.  "That means you're facing a lot of competition from overseas. That trend of horticultural product imports.”

But Meyer said when it comes to the bigger picture of 2025, USDA’s expectation is for a mixed bag when it comes to some of those input prices in the next year.

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