Tim Brannon, owner of B&G Equipment in Paris, Tenn., was one of 4 dealers who sat on a dealer panel during the FEMA Fall Convention in Las Vegas. Following his session, we caught up with Brannon to talk about his outlook on the ag market. 

He stressed the current differences between the livestock and row-crop markets. 

“If it has four legs or maybe two legs and eats the livestock industry, I think I see no bumps in the road. It's going to be a long-term success story and profitability in the livestock industry, especially the cattle market. On the other hand, the row crop, corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, rice, I did check with Purdue and a couple other universities that put out cost of production on crops and most of them had a $50 return on land, which is really low, and they were all in negative numbers. I don't know that I've seen that. Now, are all farmers losing money? No, the average corn yield is 188 bushel, they say, so there's a lot of guys that made a lot more yield than that. But from the 200 bushel an acre down, if you're on your own land, 200 bushel is about to break even.”

“But what about those that make up the rest of those statistics? They're losing money big time. We check, and it's online, you can look the Mississippi State FSA or whatever it was. They had a panel and they sent a report to Washington that their farmers are losing money big time and it's worse than it was in the 1980s. The only difference is we're not looking at 18% interest. Arkansas did the same thing. Arkansas said that they may foreclose on a third. Geez, that's just unheard of. It hurts me to even think about that. So if you put all those together, there is an impending issue out there that may be cataclysmic. I hope and pray that that's not true. The thing that could change it would be China, but the president just got back from China and I checked this morning. There was a little bump in the soybean market. I hope it has taken off since I looked at it, but it was not enough to put us in the black.”

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