As the midterm elections approached, many American farmers were in the dumps.
Their appraisal of both current conditions and future expectations for their farms dropped from August to September.
That’s according to the Ag Economy Barometer, a survey of a sample of farmers that is a joint project between Indiana-based Purdue University and the CME Group, a futures marketplace.
Researchers from the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture noted Oct. 6 that 22 percent of farmers surveyed expected to be better off a year from now, versus 35 percent who thought they would be worse off.
High input costs were reported by a record 52 percent of farmers as their chief concern, and 54 percent of farmers said high prices in general were standing in the way of their financial progress. …