Posted on April, 2, 2025 at 07:29 am
Concerns over agricultural trade and farm policy dropped US farmers’ outlook for the future, with the Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer falling 12 points to a reading of 140 in March.
Contributing to the weakened sentiment in March was a 15-point drop in the Index of Future Expectations to 144 and the Current Conditions Index falling 5 points to 132.
The drop in sentiment was influenced by falling crop prices since mid-February, along with increasing uncertainty surrounding agricultural trade and farm policy. Producers remained more optimistic about future conditions than the present, with the Future Expectations Index remaining higher than the Current Conditions Index by 12 points.
“While the overall sentiment shift in March reflects growing uncertainty, farmers remain cautiously optimistic about the future, particularly with farmland values holding steady and the outlook for strong returns in the livestock sector helping to offset weaker expectations among crop producers,” said Michael Langemeier, the barometer’s principal investigator and director of Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture.
This month’s survey was conducted between March 10-14.
In the March survey, producers expectations about US agricultural exports reached a record low, with 30% of producers anticipating a decline in exports, nearly matching the 33% who expect exports to rise.
The barometer surveys have asked producers about export expectations since 2019. Producers were optimistic about export growth in 2019 and 2020 surveys but that feeling started to decline in 2021 and has continued to erode, researchers said.
Since the November general election, trade policy has been a fast-growing concern, with 43% of respondents now citing it as the most critical issue impacting their farms. That’s up from an average of just 21% prior to the election.
Uncertainties about trade policy and its potential impact on US agricultural exports are closely tied to farmers’ expectations for farm income. The March survey asked producers about the likelihood of a program similar to 2019’s Market Facilitation Program, created to compensate for lower output prices due to a trade war.
Approximately two-thirds of respondents believe a follow-up to such a program is either “likely” (52%) or “very likely” (13%) to be implemented. Additionally, 74% of farmers in March indicated that the passage of a new farm bill this year was either “very important” (49%) or “important” (25%) to them.
Source: World Grain