The 2022 Georgia Ag Forecast was held Friday, January 28, 2022 in-person on the UGA Tifton campus and virtually via Zoom. The Forecast was started back in 2018 as a means of communication between Georgia agricultural producers and the university. During each Ag Forecast, UGA Faculty and Extension experts share the latest research and information in a variety of subject areas, from animal science and livestock production to forestry. A key portion of the presentations focuses on economic market outlooks of agricultural markets for the coming year. Read on to hear a few of the highlights presented in the 2022 Georgia Ag Forecast.
The 2022 general session featured comments by Dr. Nick Place, Dean of the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES). Dr. Place discussed ongoing improvements and investments into UGA agricultural study programs such as investments into precision agriculture and horticulture. He also highlighted the efforts of UGA Extension, which completed over 800,000 formal educational contact hours in 2021. Keynote speakers have presented a variety of topics in the past, including the 2018 farm bill, UGA rural initiatives, and the impact of COVID-19 on Georgia agricultural industries. The keynote speaker, Dr. Jeff Dorfman, is an agricultural economist from UGA with over thirty years of experience in the industry. Dr. Dorfman focused on a general economic outlook in the U.S. given all of the changes throughout the pandemic. He highlighted an expectation for strong consumer spending through the first half of 2022, slowing down in 6-9 months or so. Dr. Dorfman also showed an increase in spending on goods and personal consumption (up 21%) and a decline in the purchase and use of services since 2019. On the agriculture side, all inputs costs have increased, most more than 30% and some as high as 100% over 2021 prices. While he doesn’t expect input prices to continue to rise, he was unable to predict if and when they will drop again. His recommendation was to tough out the input cost for one more growing season, then look for improvement in expenses.
Participants were given the option of attending two breakout sessions- livestock/poultry, horticulture, forestry, or row crops. In the livestock session, Dr. Tommie Shepherd, UGA economist presented on several species and trends. Dairy consumption is steadily increasing, though the increase is only due to manufactured products like cheese, butter, and yoghurt. Fluid milk continues to decline as does milk cow populations. The expectation is for dairy domestic and international demand to remain strong, but the impact of high input cost is yet to be determined. All meats (beef, pork, poultry) are experiencing high domestic demand, high retail prices, and good export demand. It is expected that production will decline due to the natural production cycles resulting in higher farm prices and declining profit margin for producers. Todd Southerland discussed some common trends including ongoing uncertainty, risk, and volatility, all which can impact demand and production. Labor and transportation were also identified as areas impacting the supply chain and prices both of production and to the consumer- problems that were concerns prior to COVID-19 but continue to be issues for the industry today. As mentioned several times, input costs are the number one concern for livestock producers going into the 2022 growing season.
More information on other commodities will be available on the Georgia Ag Forecast website at https://agforecast.caes.uga.edu/ including full written reports for each year. If you have questions, please let us know at uge3181@uga.edu or 706-359-3233.
