Farmers are increasingly dour about the outlook for U.S. farm exports, with 27 percent expecting lower soybean prices in the year ahead — nearly double the figure from a month earlier, said a Purdue University poll of 400 producers. The Ag Economy Barometer, a monthly gauge of producer sentiment conducted by Purdue, fell to 125 during April, its lowest reading since March 2017, when it was 124.
Soybeans are an especially sensitive subject, since China buys nearly 30 percent of U.S. soybean exports, said the three Purdue economists who oversee the barometer. China is the No. 1 market for U.S. farm exports. Washington and Beijing have threatened billions of dollars in tit-for-tat tariffs over Chinese high-technology products and U.S. agricultural commodities.
“U.S. producers expressed an increase in concern compared to a month earlier about future ag exports, with 17 percent of producers indicating they expect exports to decline over the next five years,” wrote the economists. The figure was 13 percent in March. “Concerns about commodity prices appeared to have some spillover impact on producers’ views of farmland prices, as the percentage of producers expecting farmland values to increase over the next five years declined from 53 percent in February to 46 percent in April,” said the report.