Mix of tree heights enhances drought resilience in Sierra Nevada forests
In a paper published in Nature Communications, UC Merced Professor Roger Bales, collaborating with an international team, found that the height of neighboring trees strongly influenced whether a given tree survived California’s record 2012-15 drought. Using high-resolution maps developed from aircraft flights before and after the drought, the team determined the fate of more than 1 million conifer trees in the southern Sierra. They found that trees overshadowed by taller neighbors were less likely to suffer drought stress and die, mostly due to reduced sunlight and thus lower growth and water demand. A forest with a similar number of trees, but of more-uniform height, whether large or small, lacks this shading by neighbors, and is more vulnerable to competition for water and drought stress.
University Michigan Survey of community sentiment jumps
Consumer sentiment soared 13% in January to reach its highest level since July 2021, showing that the sharp increase in December was no fluke. Consumer views were supported by confidence that inflation has turned a corner and strengthening income expectations. Over the last two months, sentiment has climbed a cumulative 29%, the largest two-month increase since 1991 as a recession ended. For the second straight month, all five index components rose, with a 27% surge in the short-run outlook for business conditions and a 14% gain in current personal finances. Like December, there was a broad consensus of improved sentiment across age, income, education, and geography. Democrats and Republicans alike showed their most favorable readings since summer of 2021. Sentiment has now risen nearly 60% above the all-time low measured in June of 2022 and is likely to provide some positive momentum for the economy. Sentiment is now just 7% shy of the historical average since 1978.
Farm Bureau’s Duvall: Biggest problem facing agriculture is lack of labor
Congress must reform the guestworker program to ensure there are enough workers on the farm to produce America’s food, said the president of the largest U.S. farm group on Sunday.
“It’s the biggest limiting factor that American agriculture has,” said president Zippy Duvall at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention in Salt Lake City.
“Now we recognize the political environment is difficult in Washington, D.C. On Capitol Hill we cannot afford to wait for action on this important issue,” said Duvall. Reform of the H-2A visa program, which now provides seasonal workers, should allow year-round workers and it should set wages at a more affordable level for employers instead of the federally set rate that is galloping out of reach, he said.
Duvall also called for passage of a new farm bill that provides “an updated safety net” that takes into account rising costs of production and the impact of inflation on the price of supplies. In addition, the AFBF is seeking a congressional override of California’s Proposition 12 animal welfare law, said AFBF officials.
Lawmakers have clashed for years over comprehensive immigration reform and there are few signs of agreement with the presidential election on the horizon. The House passed a bipartisan ag labor bill in March 2021, with provisions to modernize the H-2A system and to give legal status to undocumented farmworkers, but it died in the Senate in 2022. The AFBF opposed the bill.
Half of U.S. farmworkers are believed to be undocumented and many of them are reaching retirement age. For years, farmers have reported difficulty in recruiting workers for physically demanding work in the fields and handling livestock.
“Because of the pandemic, the high inflation, rising costs of production, and disruptions around the globe, we need a new farm bill that provides an updated safety net to address those challenges,” said Duvall during a news conference. “Congress must also work on the guestworker program. We need a solution that meets the demands for both year-round and seasonal workers. We need a wage rate … that compensates workers fairly and also keep our farms economically sustainable.”
The AFBF is among farm groups that want the farm bill to include higher reference prices, a key factor in calculating crop subsidies. Lawmakers have deadlocked for months over the idea. An increase would be expensive, and the most immediate way to pay for it would be to raid the $20 billion in climate funds. Senate Agriculture chairwoman Debbie Stabenow has rejected that idea.
“We heard loud and clear from out members … that that is a priority,” said Sam Keiffer, the AFBF’s lead lobbyist, when asked what AFBF wanted on reference prices.
Farm groups and their allies in Congress have been resolute in pushing for higher reference prices. By one estimate, a 10-percent increase in reference prices would cost $20 billion and a 20-percent increase would cost $50 billion.
It’s difficult to negotiate legislation when farm groups have been reluctant to spell out their goals but will not yield on them, said an agriculture lobbyist who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They’re living in la-la land.
As inflation falls, ‘backwards pressure’ on food prices, analyst says
Compared to food price inflation of 11% in 2022, grocery price increases will be virtually nonexistent this year, said a Wells Fargo analyst Wednesday during a panel discussion on the 2024 outlook for the food and ag sector. A Rabobank analyst said that softer commodity prices would take the steam out of the hot farmland market.
“Consumers are going to be very happy” with low inflation in the food sector, said Michael Swanson, chief ag economist at
, to the North American Agricultural Journalists. Food makers will face “backwards pressure” on prices from retailers and food service operators.
Grocery inflation at the start of this year would be 1 percent or slightly higher but trend downward to zero or into negative territory by the end of the year, he said. For the restaurant, fast-food, and cafeteria sectors, lumped together as food away from home, “we’re still closer to 6% right now,” said Swanson. Americans love to eat out, he said, but consumers are showing resistance to high menu prices. “It’s going to be interesting to see who wants to eat where.”
According to the Consumer Price Index, food inflation was 2.9% at the end of 2023. USDA economists forecast that grocery prices this year will be, on average, 0.6% lower than in 2023 and that the food-away-from-home inflation rate will be 4.9%.
Farmland prices have boomed this decade, thanks to strong commodity prices and the three best years on record for farm income, but they’re likely to flatten in the near term, said Roland Fumasi, the head of RaboResearch Food and Agribusiness. Land values accelerate during periods of high commodity prices and slacken when prices moderate. Agricultural economists in the private and government sectors anticipated somewhat lower commodity prices in coming years.
“Given the pullback that we’ve seen in crop prices, we’re probably going to take a little breather, and we’re not going to keep going up at these fast paces in terms of land values, like we have for the last few years,” said Fumasi. Land values might rise or fall by 1 or 2% in a year, he said, “but I think any change is going to be pretty muted.”
Agricultural land values in the Midwest rose 5% during 2023, the smallest gain in three years, said the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank in November. The Kansas City Fed said that while the national agricultural economy softened last fall, farm real estate values “held firm with ongoing support from a strong agricultural economy in recent years.”
In a list of key issues for the agricultural economy, Dan Sumner, an economist at the University of California-Davis, put China first. “We’ve got trouble with growth in China,” he said, with possible direct impact on U.S. agriculture, because China is the No. 1 market for U.S. food and ag exports.