2017 Agricultural Outlook Not As Dire?
November 7, 2016 As 2016 heads towards its conclusion, there are many of us in the agricultural marketplace already looking forward to what 2017 might bring. I know for several months now, surveys from the nation’s top ag retailers have been coming into our offices, which will make up the bulk of our soon-to-be-released December 2016 CropLife 100 report.
Thus far, most ag retailers in the survey have predicted they believe 2017 will be another in the current string of down years, with low commodity prices continuing to depress grower-customer income and, by extension, crop input/service revenues. In fact, approximately half of all the 2016 CropLife 100 surveys collected thus far have mentioned this is the most likely scenario to unfold throughout the upcoming year.
But then, however, I attended our annual PACE Council meeting. By way of background, for the past 22 years now, CropLife magazine has regularly gathered together industry leaders from across the agricultural market to discuss current key issues facing the industry and look ahead to how these could play out in the year to come. Given what I’d been hearing through our CropLife 100 survey respondents, I fully expected the “doom-and-gloom” predictions for agriculture to continue in earnest at the 2016 PACE event.
Loading ...And there was some of this. But not as much as I expected. In fact, a few folks at the PACE meeting – particularly the ag retailers present – said that they believed 2016 would end up being the “bottom” of this current “down” agricultural cycle and things would, at worst, “be flat in 2017” or, at best, “be up a little.”
“We had much stronger fertilizer demand this fall than I would have anticipated back during the summer months,” said one PACE representative. “I guess the lesson is that growers will continue to spend on the things they need to to keep their yields from dropping.”
It will interesting to see if this sliver of optimism continues during the rest of the 2016 trade show schedule and on into the new year. As always, time will tell . . .
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