Appreciating the Positives for Agriculture in 2023
December 25, 2023 As another year draws to a close, I find myself looking back over 2023 with a kind of bemused wonder. Given how the year began for the world and agriculture, I had my doubts the industry could even come close to topping its performance during the 2022 growing season.
For example, as reported in the 2022 CropLife 100 report from the December 2022, last year was exceptional for the nation’s top ag retailers, with 99 out of the 100 top companies recording sales gains vs. the year before. With the bar being set so incredibly high, I was worried 2023 couldn’t possibly achieve this type of mark two years in a row.
And it didn’t. But that doesn’t mean the ag retail industry performed poorly, either.
As you will find elsewhere in this month’s issue, the nation’s top ag retailers did manage to grow their overall revenues during 2023, with income growing from $46 billion in 2022 to $46.7 billion this year. Considering the fact that fertilizer prices were roughly half of their early 2022 highs and crop protection product prices were also reportedly much lower than they had been during the prior two years, for the industry to still record a 2% sales increase for 2023 is nothing short of phenomenal.
Still, despite these overall positive numbers, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the 2023 CropLife 100 survey data is the outlook for the upcoming 2024 growing season. In fact, when survey respondents were asked to rate the outlook for next year on a scale of one to 10, 32% of them picked “eight” as their number. Six percent even predicted 2024 would rate a “10” in terms of economics!
Digging a little deeper into the data, it’s clear one of the major reasons for this positiveness going into 2024 ties back to ag technology developments and adoption. In fact, when asked to describe the most important development in agriculture over the 40-year lifespan of the CropLife 100, 50% of respondents said it was ag technology. Not only did this make communicating with customers, workers, and those in the field easier, it also led to increased efficiency and crop input utilization. Examples of this would include all forms of precision agriculture and numerous technological improvements to the “Big IRON” itself.
And CropLife 100 ag retailer expect ag technology to continue moving the entire industry forward over the next few years as well. “Technology in totality will increase the ability for ag retailers and growers to make informed decisions,” wrote Nick Christen, Vice President of Grain and Agronomy at ALCIVIA, Cottage Grove, WI, on his company’s 2023 CropLife 100 survey.
So, here’s to a toast to a better-than-expected 2023 for the agriculture industry — and many more happy returns in 2024! In that spirit, happy new year, from all of us here at CropLife! I can hardly wait to see what comes next.
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