Farmers attending the Northern Corn and Soybean Expo heard a candid assessment of the current farm economy. Ben Brown, senior research associate with the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute said conditions across North Dakota and much of the Midwest remain challenging. “It’s a mixed economy because we’ve had years of strong yields coupled with low prices; that creates a sense of frustration.” Brown said agriculture remains cyclical, but recent cycles have been more extreme than in the past. “We had the 2012/2013 era of high prices and then just 10, 15 years later, we had very strong income years as well,” he said, noting that those peaks were followed by a prolonged period of weak margins.
