Subscribe
Jobs
Cars
Real Estate
Apts
Classifieds
Shop
Skyrocketing demand boosted the value of Indiana’s crops and livestock almost 73 percent in five years, according to the 2007 Census of Agriculture released Wednesday.
The census, done every five years, captured data from a year when grain farmers profited from high prices. But most of those gains have been wiped out in the past six months, industry experts say. Corn prices have plunged more than 50 percent from last summer’s record highs of nearly $8 a bushel.
Hoosier farmers produced nearly $8.3 billion worth of crops and livestock in 2007, according to the census. That reflected the booming ethanol industry’s soaring demand for corn, said Jamie Price, an agricultural statistician for the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s Indiana Field Office. Foreign companies also were buying up U.S. grain because the weak dollar made prices attractive, she said.
Those conditions no longer exist, said Darin Newsom, senior agricultural analyst at Data Transmission Network, an Omaha, Neb.-based firm that monitors commodity markets. The strengthening dollar and the global recession dampened demand for U.S. crops. Falling oil prices slammed ethanol plants’ profit margins, forcing some into bankruptcy. These factors quashed grain prices, he said.
Even when grain prices were high, rising expenses cut into farm profits, said Mark Roemke, a Harlan farmer who raises about 4,000 acres of grain with two partners. Farm expenses nationwide climbed 39 percent between 2002 and 2007, according to the data.
Indiana gained 642 farms during the five-year period between censuses. The number of farms nationwide has declined since World War II, but that trend appears to be leveling, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service, which conducts the census.
More people are moving to country homes and raising some crops or animals in their spare time, Price said. These small landowners contributed to the rising number of farms statewide, she said. If rural residents earn $1,000 a year from farm products or have the potential to earn that much, they are considered farmers.
