Interest rates have come down, but it will take time for those effects to be felt on the farm. “We went from three to four percent farm level interest rates up to seven percent and now we’re coming down from seven to maybe six percent,” said David Widmar, economist, Agricultural Economic Insights. “We’ll start to see some improvement, but we went up a lot and we’ve only come down a little.” Interest rates impact everything from borrowing costs to asset valuations “so it’s going to take time to work this way through this system.” Some input costs have come down slightly, which is positive news for the budget.
