Pat Westhoff Archives

MU policy analyst looks ahead to 2013 Farm Bill debate

December 31, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Director of the Food and Agricultural Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri says the fiscal cliff was at one time thought to be a driver that might get a Farm Bill done quickly. That didn’t happen, and now Pat Westhoff says the next deadline is several months away.

Director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute Pat Westhoff

“It’s probably going to be some time in late spring, I would speculate now, before we’d ever get everything all put together for a final farm bill. There’s a chance we might approve a one-year extension of current provisions of some kind before that.”

Westhoff says there is one thing that could change in farm policy that would impact crops grown in 2013.

“Many people speculate there might be a cut in direct payments as a way to reduce the overall budgetary cost of farm programs, even absent an agreement about a longer-term farm bill.”

If direct payments are eliminated, Westhoff says something might take their place.

He says a lot of concern exists over crop insurance, but he says major cuts in that program are not likely.

“We are going to see the government costs to the crop insurance program for the current fiscal year. That will probably draw some attention and there may well be proposals to make cuts in that program, but if this year’s debate is any indication there is a lot of support for the crop insurance program in Congress and I would personally be surprised if there were major cuts made in that program.”

Westhoff notes, with the same lawmakers in place that were a part of the 2013 farm bill debate, many of the farm bill proposals will be very similar to what was discussed in 2012.

FAPRI director: crop production report portents higher meat prices

August 14, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Department of Agriculture’s latest grains forecast confirms what analysts expected: the drought has decimated the nation’s corn crop. The latest USDA report says the nation’s corn crop could be down 13 percent from last year and the lowest since 2006. Soybean production could be down 12 percent from 2011 and the lowest since 2003.

Click the image to go to USDA’s August 10 crop production report.

Director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri, Pat Westhoff, says that will translate to higher meat prices. “We won’t see too much in the near term. We could even have the opposite effect where … especially in the case of beef we’re going to have a little bit more beef hitting the market here in the near term as farmers liquidate animals they might otherwise have held onto. That’s going to actually push beef prices down a bit in the very near term, but by 2013 I’d expect to see higher prices for meat across-the-board.”

How long it will take for the economy to recover fromthe drought depends on the next few years’ production.

“If we were to have a really big crop in 2013, we could rebuild stocks pretty quickly. With the kind of acreage we planted this year to corn, for example, we just had what should have been a longer-term trend yield. We could have had a very big crop this year and could have seen much lower prices. If we were to have that kind of production level in 2013, it might bring prices back down again pretty hard from where they are right now.”

Westhoff says the nation’s corn, soybeans and wheat in storage were already low coming into the growing year. “We’ll see in September what the final estimates are in terms of how much corn we’re carrying over into the new marketing year, so this is a very different situation from 1988. In many ways this drought is comparable in scale and severity to the ’88 drought, but the big difference is in ’88 we had a whole lot of corn in storage, a lot of soybeans, a lot of wheat in storage. This year we don’t, so we have to get by on what we’re producing this year in order to get from here until the next harvest.”

The report is a reminder that the drought extends well beyond Missouri. Westhoff says it will affect feed prices all around the world.

FAPRI analyst: Food price impact of drought not seen yet, but coming

July 20, 2012 By Mike Lear

Corn and soybean market prices have hit record highs this week due to the Midwestern drought, but so far the impact on consumer prices is just beginning.

Drought damaged corn on the Goyings Farm in Paulding County, Ohio on Tuesday, July 17, 2012. USDA photo by Christina Reed.

Pat Westhoff is the Co-Director of the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri. He says a consumer price report for June shows similar food price inflation to previous months. Price hikes are coming, but he says they’ll take time to reach supermarkets.

Changes in prices for products made directly from corn and soybean oil will come first. “The main effects are going to be probably a bit delayed because they’re going to happen through the livestock sector. As we all know, cattle production doesn’t turn on a dime, so it’s going to tack a while before we see reduced cattle numbers translate into less beef and less beef eventually turns into higher prices. Same holds for pork, same holds for chicken.”

Some manufacturers might start adjusting prices soon in anticipating of higher input costs. Westhoff says, “It’s important to remember a lot of those items are items where the farm value of the products that’s in those items is very small. If you buy a box of cereal, the actual amount of corn or wheat or something that’s included in that box of cereal is a very, very small share of the overall value of that product on the grocery store shelf. So, changing the farm price of corn or wheat by a lot only has a very small in proportion impact on prices at the grocery store.”

The good news, Westhoff says, is that the U.S. had been on track for lower food prices were it not for the drought. “So what this may do is instead of causing a huge, fast rate of growth in food prices in front of us, it may just stop what would have otherwise have been a decline in food price inflation in the months ahead.”

Westhoff says exactly how bad this year’s drought is won’t be fully known until it’s over, but among analysts it’s already being placed among historic company. “Clearly this has lots of parallels at least to 1988, the last time we had a really, really severe drought across the entire country … some people say it may be worse than 1988 already. Maybe more like some of the droughts of the 1950s.

“So there are some historic parallels but of course there are lots of things different in the world now than was the case back then.”