The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

USDA’s farm-income forecast improves relative to Feb-2016 forecast:

http://www.ers.usda.gov/dataFiles/Farm_Income/FarmSectorIndicatorsAugust2016.xlsx

The new 2016 forecast is $71.5B, 30% higher than the Feb-2016 2016 forecast of $50.8B due to less crop acreage being planted than the USDA thought in Feb 2016.

However, the new $71.5B forecast is still weak relative to the recent past: it is down 11.5% from 2015 ($80.7B) and down a whopping 42% from the all-time high in 2013 ($123.8B).

p.s. The figures at the bottom of #msg-124519182 are wrong and should be ignored.