A Poll Vault
October 19, 2011 As the summer steadily turns to fall, the nation is looking toward the November election season with interest. Besides numerous debates and campaign commercials, average Americans are also being bombarded with a number of opinion polls, designed to gauge how the potential voter feels about the various issues and candidates scheduled to be on ballots all across the country.
Here at CropLife, we like polls, too. Although our staff is pretty good at making market assumptions based upon what we know, have seen in the past or think might happen next, it’s always useful to find out if our readers and followers feel the same way or see something completely different from their vantage points.
Take the general agricultural market, for instances. For the past month or two, I’ve spent much time in this column wondering if the overall sluggishness in the general economy might somehow spill over into the ag marketplace. My gut-reading of this is no, but I’ve looked to our readership polls to see if I’m alone in this opinion.
Apparently, the market agrees with me. In one recent poll asking if the financial outlook for 2011 will remain positive, 13% of respondents said yes, with another 39% responding they were “somewhat optimistic” that times would stay strong. Furthermore, 41% said they expected their companies to make more profits in 2011 vs. 2010 and 56% wrote that they believed these economic “good times” for agriculture would last another one to three years. As for the much-discussed Agricultural Bubble 2.0 about to pop, 25% in one of our polls said they didn’t believe this would happen in 2012, with another 36% saying it could happen, but not next year based upon their market experiences at present.
Another recent topic I’ve discussed is the growing problem of glyphosate-resistant weeds. In my reading of the situation, this is a very serious problem for the industry and it will only get worse in the years ahead. According to a poll we conducted along with one of these columns, 58% of readers agreed that resistant weeds were a “very” or “somewhat” serious problem, with the remaining 42% writing the problem “wasn’t too bad” in their areas. Yet, interestingly, 0% of readers said that they were no resistant weeds in their markets, meaning that 100% of our respondents are dealing with them in some way or another.
These are just a few things to think about as the market heads into fall. And look for more opinion polls, from all media sources, in the near future.
Subscribe Today For
