“Clearly the number one thing that everyone is mainly concerned is, where are prices going to go in the next year?” Irwin said.
Meanwhile, beef is selling for record-high prices, sparked by the smallest U.S. herd in about 75 years. Cortney Cowley, a senior economist at the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, said the challenges for crops and livestock are opposites.
“On the livestock side, we don't have the supply to meet the demand, which is why we have such high prices,” Cowley said. “But on the crop side, we have too much supply and not enough demand where those markets become a lot more important.”
Across the board, producers are paying more for inputs like fertilizer and machinery. And many farmers have lost international customers as the ongoing trade war has disrupted export markets.
A September report from the University of Missouri found that farm income could fall by about $30 billion dollars in 2026 due to lower crop prices and a decline in government payments.
Irwin said many farmers in the Corn Belt have been surviving on a series of ad hoc payment programs from the federal government. Next year, producers are slated to receive billions in funding from disaster relief and economic aid programs – including a $12 billion bailout package announced earlier this month that aims to offset losses from low crop prices and the trade war.
Irwin said those payments could push farmers in Illinois toward a small profit instead of a hefty loss.
But, ad hoc payments only go so far, Cowley said.
“It’s not necessarily going to help the fundamentals of, you know, what do we do with the supply of the products that we grow?” Cowley said. “And what does that mean for prices that farmers are going to be paid on the market?”
Click here to see more...