Do you think agricultural input costs are droping?.
Input prices were very low for me last year, after record high prices the year before. My biggest input costs are fertilizer and roundup herbicide. Fertilizer was down to about $450 per tonne for urea which is back to about normal. It was over $1000 per tonne the year before and peaked at $1200.
Roundup was down to $3.50 per litre, which was cheapest in history. It was $13 per litre the year before, and $20 per litre 20 years ago before China started manufacturing it after it went off patent. Roundup is still significantly cheaper than normal.
Other herbicide costs were OK. Some are as cheap as they have ever been and some go up steadily.
Diesel was back to normal. Diesel is our third biggest input cost.
I think input prices have bottomed out and will rise again now. Herbicides and fertilizer and diesel is all rising now.
Do you think agricutural prices are droping?
Specifically for australia.
are there any links to any recent data trends on this? prices of inputs and final selling prices, not the drought.
I know sugar prices are droping now.
what about wheat?
what about grain? (is livestock prices sensitive to grain prices?)
how about fruit and vegetable?
thanks help and views very much appreciated.
Farm commodity prices have dropped heaps from the top a few years ago. The big prices led farmers to increase plantings and increase fertilizer. This increased production. It was a typical price led supply/demand increase.
10 year Wheat prices in $US per tonne,.....
So prices are back to about normal. Prices took off with the commodity boom and oil prices. The last big spike in prices was when oil peaked nearly 40 years ago in the oil crisis back then.
Another chart showing real wheat prices [inflation adjusted] and wheat stocks,.....
You can see the 1973 high with the oil crisis. Global wheat stocks are still lower than normal so it would only take a hickup somewhere in the world for prices to take off again.
I think farm commodity prices are at a low now. Australia has the added problem of our high dollar. But this means lower input costs of course, so it's not all bad for us.
Livestock runs a different course to grain. Cattle are bad at the moment. Sheep are good. Sheep are good because they have been bad for a long time and farmers got out of them. Supply and demand again.
Fruit and veges are almost totally weather related. Plus, unlike other farm commodities grown in Australia, they have a high labour input, so fruit and veges are under pressure from low cost imports from Asia with low labour costs.
See ya's.