2022 Was a Good Year for Farming

Wednesday, January 4th, 2023 -- 8:01 AM

(Hope Kirwan, Wisconsin Public Radio) Even after a year of record high inflation, economic forecasts show 2022 was a good year to be farming.

According to Hope Kirwan with Wisconsin Public Radio, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service estimated that national net farm income will reach $160.5 billion for the year. That’s 13.8 percent higher than in 2021 and roughly 50 percent higher than the 20-year average, according to ag economist Paul Mitchell.

Mitchell, who leads the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said part of the prosperity comes from COVID-19 aid from the federal government, which helped kick-start demand after an initial downturn at the start of the pandemic.

"We’ve had unprecedented levels of commodity support for agriculture for a couple years and then really good prices," he said. The higher commodity prices helped soften the blow of lower government payments this year, which are forecast to be around 36 percent lower than they were last year.

Adjusted for inflation, net farm income is still forecast to be up 7.2 percent from 2021 and is at its highest level since 1973. "It landed in the checking account," said Paul Dietmann, a senior lending specialist for Compeer Financial in Wisconsin.

"Even though farmers obviously are very concerned about the fact that for most of the year fuel prices were high, most of the year fertilizer costs were extremely high compared to the previous year. There’s concerns there for sure, but it’s showing up in checking accounts."

Dietmann said it’s uncommon to see prices up across all crops, from corn to livestock. And he said it’s extremely unusual to see a record year after having a great year in 2021.

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