Catastrophic floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s southernmost state, highly impacted livestock and soybeans, causing a nearly 2% reduction in national soybean production. Other crops, such as rice and corn, were impacted on a smaller scale as their harvests were more advanced when rains began. Looking ahead, the challenges faced by farmers in Rio Grande do Sul because of financial constraints and damaged infrastructure could lead to reduced soybean and corn planting in the next season.

News headlines continue to highlight that inflation — the rate of increase in prices — is cooling but overall prices remain much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Because prices remain relatively high, it is unclear that consumers are feeling any relief. In this post, we look at data from the most recent wave of the Gardner Food and Agricultural Policy Survey to examine consumers’ perceptions of food affordability and views on inflation more generally.

Changes in global competition, production technology, new product development and resource constraints have increased the strategic uncertainty faced by individual agricultural producers. The degree and speed of change in agriculture presents a need for integrated risk management at the farm level, which requires implementation of a clearly defined business strategy – agile enough to adapt to unanticipated events.

The disparate treatment of conservation and SNAP in the 2024 House Farm Bill, as compared to farm program payments, magnifies the budgetary dissonance of the House Farm Bill. That budgetary dissonance could serve a larger purpose, however, because it exposes fundamental flaws in federal budget policy, as well as the troubling consequences of budget policy for policymaking and the legislative process.

In response to higher inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised the effective Federal Funds interest rate from 0.08% in January 2022 to 5.3% currently. It is now higher relative to current inflation than its historical average over the last 60 plus years. In contrast, market interest rates relative to inflation are lower than history suggests. If the market’s view is correct, the Fed will begin to cut interest rates but market rates will likely decline less than the Federal Funds rate.

Both the House and Senate versions of the farm bill include proposals to modify Supplemental Coverage Option (SCO) insurance. SCO crop insurance provides county-level coverage from the selected coverage level on a farm-level crop insurance product up to a fixed maximum coverage level based on county-level results. This article examines the impacts of the SCO version proposed by the House for corn in McLean County, Illinois. Overall, increasing SCO subsidy levels seems questionable as a policy objective. At best, farmers risk management is improved marginally at high costs to the Federal government. A better focus would be on enhancing the protection of the underlying farm-level product.