Agricultural economics are seeing a rise in trends of prices and costs. Krista Swanson, a research specialist for the Gardner Agriculture Policy Program at the University of Illinois, shares some findings from an article she helped write regarding corn and soybean price trends:
“As we see prices go up, we tend to see costs come up as well. The other concerning thing is that history suggests that input costs will not decline as much as commodity prices; so, once we hit this point where commodity prices start declining, we generally don’t see input costs fall as much. We had increase buy by China and our other export destinations. China started buying a lot more soybeans and corn and other agricultural products—that boosted our demand. We had some South American dynamics coming in; also there were a lot of regions of the United States we in major drought conditions over the past few months. And so, I think all of these things are playing a part.”
