Kentucky farmers are seeing financial gains even when coping with a variety of both economic and natural challenges. Those issues include inflation, supply chain and trade disruptions, major weather events, and a war between two major global markets. Still, University of Kentucky Agriculture Economists predict the state’s 2022 ag receipts will approach a record $8 billion dollars. UK Ag Economist Will Snell said 2023 looks promising but added the market could be volatile.
“We’re cautiously optimistic that there’s money to be made in 2023 and farmers have got to continue to monitor these markets almost on a daily basis and really try to protect themself from price risk and yield risk as much as possible,” said Snell.
Snell says prices of commodities went up by a greater amount than the costs for farmers. Plus, for grain farmers, the UK ag expert says there was carryover grain from last year and farmers were rewarded with higher prices.
Once Kentucky’s primary crop, tobacco continues to decline in production, according to Snell.
“My guess is when the 2022 numbers are out, it will be a challenge to have a thousand farms still growing tobacco in the state, so to go from 60,000 down to around a thousand is obviously a huge structural change,” said Snell
Snell said Kentucky’s heyday in tobacco production found 60,000 burley growers across the Commonwealth.
Hemp is another commodity with its own challenging story. Snell noted the ag industry still faces impacts from massive over-production.
Here's an extended interview with UK Ag Economist Will Snell:
