{"id":3479,"date":"2012-01-05T15:33:15","date_gmt":"2012-01-05T22:33:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=3479"},"modified":"2012-01-05T15:34:28","modified_gmt":"2012-01-05T22:34:28","slug":"idahos-farm-income-growth-dwarfs-national-gains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/01\/05\/idahos-farm-income-growth-dwarfs-national-gains\/","title":{"rendered":"Idaho’s Farm Income Growth Dwarfs National Gains"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Damien Meyer \/ AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>

<\/p><\/div>\n

This is a boom time for agriculture, and Idaho’s upswing far outpaces national growth.\u00a0 While total U.S. net farm income soared from 2010 to 2011, rising by 28 percent, a report<\/a> released today shows the state’s net farm income rose by 88 percent<\/em> in the same period.<\/p>\n

Report co-author Paul Patterson, an agricultural economist, says there’s a simple explanation for the disparity.\u00a0 “If you look at the crops that we have in our mix compared to the U.S., we have better overall price increases for the crops that we produce in Idaho compared to the nation as a whole,” he said.\u00a0 Hay is one example.\u00a0 It’s a bigger crop in Idaho than in many states.\u00a0 According to the report’s estimates, hay prices went up by 74 percent in 2011.\u00a0 Potatoes are another case in point.\u00a0 “It’s our number-one crop in Idaho,” Patterson said, “but nationally it’s considered a minor crop.”\u00a0 Potato prices are estimated to have risen by 38 percent.<\/p>\n

Patterson cautions that net farm income numbers can be volatile, and that the numbers included in the report are early estimates that could be revised.<\/p>\n

In the what-goes-up-must-come-down world of commodity prices, 2012 is not projected to bring new highs.\u00a0 Patterson says that’s a simple function of supply and demand.\u00a0 Given high commodity prices, farmers have put more land into production.\u00a0 Meanwhile, Patterson says, demand has remained relatively stable.\u00a0 In other words, he says, “the probability of us seeing new records next year is pretty remote.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a boom time for agriculture, and Idaho’s upswing far outpaces national growth.\u00a0 While total U.S. net farm income soared from 2010 to 2011, rising by 28 percent, a report released today shows the state’s net farm income rose by 88 percent in the same period. Report co-author Paul Patterson, an agricultural economist, says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":3480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[49,92],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3497,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3479\/revisions\/3497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}