Show aih ad tilts ti rac in wa s llin iton with clinton daylan x DevId sook FARM INCOME UP it is in always goon good diews when something turns turn put to be better than you had x pecked that la Is the wa way inot farmers feel now 1 bout about form farm prices and income A six months ago farmers were warned by the U S department part ment of agriculture to expect another billion dollar decline this th year in their not net income that coming on top of a 8 two billion dollar drop in 1650 1059 was pretty aging the forecast of another round of belt tightening for far farmers era wasn gasn t surprising though because farm prices and income have gone down in nine of the past 10 years the only exception was wag 1958 however instead of contin conten aing downward farm prices have been rising at a rate of about one per cent a month since ince a the start of this year that has been the national average for all farm con ties naturally some farmers have fared better than others outlook forbat For roro cat cast last fall the department of agriculture as it has for the past 30 years invited agrical tural economists from all parts of the country to partial pate in an outlook confer en ene te to forecast market deman prices and income for the year ahead the economists took a dim view of f 1060 farm prices they noted had dropped an average of 7 during 1999 1939 net farm income had declined from 13 billion in 1958 1938 to ii 11 billion in 4 1999 1959 it looked then like more of the same aade in I 1 goo the parity ratio which the economists economist use to measure the fairness of prices received by farmers farmen when compared with prices they pay tor for machinery and other things used on the farms farm had dropped to a 20 year low last fall the th ratio was 77 ot of parity compared with f a lair fair price of lot of parity that meant thaltha that the average of prices received by farmers was only a little more than three quarters of a fair price production costs took 70 cents out of every dollar farmers received from the sale of their products unexpected nr raal then unexpectedly prices re by most farmers be gan to go up in january econ shook their heads and said it couldn coulden t last that it was only a temporary reversal and that the downward trend would be resumed dut but when the slow but steady climb in the average of prices continued in february march and april they began to concede that they may have been mistaken in their earlier predictions that 1960 prices would show an overall drop of three to live five per cent dy by late spring the price average had climbed from 77 to 80 of parity the most spectacular increase was a 23 climb in hog prices fro man average of 12 in january to 16 a hundred pounds in april prices of oth er livestock also increased though not by as much as hogs the economists still have their fingers crossed on the remainder of this year but around the department of agriculture there is a growing feeling that farmers have escaped for this year at least disastrously low prices that could have forced many thousands of them into bankruptcy I 1 |