Politics Dominate Ag Market Outlook

VANCOUVER - Dec 17/11 - SNS -- Though the calendar year is quickly drawing to an end, it is hard to remember a period when agriculture faced more uncertainty about the coming year's political and economic landscape than it does today.

As always, there are the normal doubts about how the interaction between supply and demand will affect trade volumes in the first quarter of the new year and what effect that will have on seeding decisions for northern hemisphere crops. Opening ideas of what will happen to acreage for specialty crops and major grains in major producing regions are already on the table. The question now becomes: how will farmers over-react?

Hanging over this discussion are more fundamental doubts about the direction of agricultural, energy and economic policy. Unfortunately, the current crop of politicians in most countries think leadership means beating down dissent and "ruling" the country. The net result is political discourse has devolved to simple efforts to blame opponents for all that is wrong and to thoughtlessly force through legislation if capable.