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Ag Economy Barometer slightly improves in June

According to the latest Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer, farmer sentiment improved slightly from last month.

Jim Mintert with Purdue’s Center for Commercial Agriculture tells Brownfield the rise was surprising.

“Given that we saw weakness, especially in corn and soybean prices from June to July, to see the rise in the indexes that rose eight points to a reading of 113,” he says. “However, that still leaves that index down about 10 points compared to it was a year ago.”

He says the number one concern for farmers is higher input costs.

“I think roughly 1/3 of the people in the survey, 34% said that their biggest concern in the upcoming year is is how high input costs are,” he says.

Overall, Mintert says,” When you compare them to where people were at this time last year, clearly sentiment is still weaker than it was a year ago.”

The Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer is a nationwide measure of the health of the U.S. agricultural economy and surveys 400 agricultural producers on economic sentiment each month.