Friday, February 25, 2011

Today on NPR

NPR's All Things Considered is featuring a story this evening about the boom times for grain farmers right now.  I'll add a link after the story is posted on the web site.
Update: here's the link.  From the story:
During recent years in America's Corn Belt, the average price for a bushel of corn has doubled to $6. The price leap has been similar for soybeans and wheat. Economist Ernie Goss of Creighton University in Omaha told NPR's Robert Siegel, "If states were stocks, I'd be selling California and buying Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota and Kansas."
Although you can't buy shares of the fertile plains of central Nebraska, you can buy farmland — with a whopping price tag. Kelly Holthus, president of Cornerstone Bank in York, Neb., says that with the high price of corn, farmland is selling between double and triple the prices from about a decade ago.
Tough economic times have not typically been so kind to farmers. The aftermaths of the Great Depression and the 1980s recession were devastating for agriculture. But today's farmers seem to be coming away unscathed from the Great Recession that began in 2008.
"What recession?" Holthus says with a laugh.
It also indicated farmers aren't going far into debt during this boom, which may lessen the pain when it comes to an end.

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