Agriculture
Page 2 - Friday, January 21, 2022
The Borderland Press
Cavalier County Economic and Agriculture Outlook for 2022 By Shanda Christianson, National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Farm Director who are solely looking for remote office type jobs. In the past, there were more people searching for those day-to-day type retail jobs so that landscape has changed quite a bit,” Borchardt said. “The barometer of unemployment has a different feel today than it did 5 years ago.” I asked Borchardt if he thinks we have bounced back as far as the pandemic goes and how the pandemic affected the economy. Shanda Christianson. Photo by Larry Stokke.
As we are getting further into the new year, we decided to take a look back at how the economy faired in 2021 and a look ahead to what a local bank president thinks we have in our future for 2022. Todd Borchardt, president of Choice Bank in Langdon, had a lot of thoughts about the topic, including that North Dakota continues to do quite a bit better than the national picture, which is largely due to the makeup of the business in the state. Borchardt said looking back to the end of 2020 as the country was coming through the pandemic, the economy as a whole contracted in terms of GDP by 3.5%, and by the end of the year, nationally, the U.S. had lost 9-10 million jobs. That made 2021 a bounce back period where things tried to get back to normal, but a hiccup that was added was other variants of the COVID-19 virus. North Dakota had its worst point of unemployment in 2020 at a little under 9%, and now the state is back to a little over 3%, which Borchardt said is normal looking at the last 10 to 20 years of statistics. So, if the jobless claims are being normalized, why do so many businesses feel short staffed? “I think that has a lot to do with the scope of what people are looking for work has changed so much now, too, so I mean you have a lot of people
He believes there are still a lot of things dripping in relative to the pandemic and how that affected businesses in metro areas. A lot of the impact was somewhat delayed with the Payment Protection Program (PPP), COVID loans, and stimulus payments that went out. It allowed a survival period to take place. Borchardt said in certain sectors that is just now becoming noticeable, meaning at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022.
While we all wish we had a crystal ball, none of us do. We can only speculate what the future holds for 2022 as far as the overall economy, and Borchardt has his predictions. He said if agriculture had an opportunity to hit a home run, it was certainly in 2021 as we saw commodity prices sharply increase, and most folks had a modest level or modest prices locked in for their input. Now looking at 2022, prices for fertilizer have more than doubled – a lot of chemicals are up sharply. You can say the same for some producers in terms of seed costs - the cost and the expense columns are almost back to the same level. Borchardt said he sees many opportunities for ag producers to be profitable in 2022.
Borchardt said crop producers for the most part did fairly well, but it was the livestock producers that to some extent didn’t do quite as well in terms of profits because a lot of those outlets for insurances and other program payments aren’t there for them. “So, if there was a sector of ag that did still struggle a little bit, I would say it was the livestock folks. We ended up with a relative amount of success in terms of farming for 2021 here,” Borchardt said.
When looking at world stocks, Borchardt thinks that’s an area that will continue to show some volatility, specifically when you look at the wheat market. In the last 2 to 3 months, there have been short term rallies then pullback, and it goes back and forth like that. In recent weeks there has been more pullback. “It’s still super profitable for producers to go out and convert crop to cash, and if there’s folks that have sat on some grain holdings for a number of years, they’re taking advantage of the markets today. I do think it’s an opportune time to sell.” Borchardt said our local area is in good shape in terms of agriculture, saying there is a lot of stability in communities like Langdon and others in the area.
Locally and regionally across North Dakota, Borchardt said ag producers had a phenomenal year. “You know we were pretty concerned about drought conditions all the way through the middle of the summer even up to harvest time in areas of the state, but fortunately commodity prices sharply rebounded throughout 2021 coming out of 2020 and still sit at pretty favorable levels so agriculture faired very well in North Dakota for the most part,” Borchardt said.
to our area, we are double the price that we sat at less than18 months ago, and we spent a lot of time hoping and praying for a market like this, so a lot of guys are taking advantage of it,” he said.
“I’m proud of the business footprint that we have here, and we have a lot
Todd Borchardt, president Choice Bank, Langdon. Photo by Larry Stokke.
“Locally, I’m optimistic. I think we’re set up in terms of moisture; we froze up in a pretty good spot in Cavalier County, and we’re sitting on a nice base of snow now. Obviously, you know a lot of that ends up being runoff, but I think moisture-wise we should be sitting really good to get things going in the spring. Hopefully, Mother Nature’s on our side as we move through the year,” Borchardt said. During our interview we also talked about commodity prices as many producers may be wondering if now is a good time to sell. Borchardt said it is. “The reason I say that is if you look at the wheat market, canola specific
of great people doing a lot of great things, so I’m optimistic locally. The national stage might be another situation. Inflation is certainly a risk that’s out there right now, so hopefully we don’t see any major hiccups in terms of stock market corrections or anything that would really impact the national stage,” Borchardt said. “We try to stay somewhat insulated in our area for the local business and the local agriculture, so hopefully we maintain a good spot here.” Shanda Christianson has been the National Association of Farm Broadcasting (NAFB) Farm Director at Simmons Multimedia for 3 years.
