2-28 NWR Farm Economy

This is your Northwest report for Tuesday, February 28 I'm David Sparks and agri-pulse.com is reporting that Ranking Member on the House Agriculture Committee, Seventh District Congressman Collin Peterson doesn't believe ag committee leaders need a lot of time to craft good policy. Peterson says the cyclical downturn in the farm economy has been tough but not as bad as he had feared and as we have been reporting on for some time. "By and large, we had tremendous crops this year... Good yields but offset the price situation so I don't think we have quite as much stress in the system right now but I thought we were going to have. The folks that are stressed are the ones that don't have a lot of land or don't own a lot of land."

Elsewhere, and on the other end of the physical spectrum, what will 2017 bring to dairy farmers? "Improved returns for dairy farmers." That was agriculture department analyst Jerry Cessna. despite a projected increase of 2 1/2% in milk output, producers will likely see average prices rising to $18 a hundredweight. That compares with 16.24 in 2016.