Purdue Survey: US Farmers Feeling Less Optimistic About Ag Economy

America’s farmers are feeling less optimistic about the ag economy than they were just a month ago. That’s according to the latest Ag Economy Barometer survey from Purdue University.

Dr. Michael Langemeier, Director of the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture, believes that the biggest factor why farmers are feeling less optimistic is what’s been happening—or better yet, what’s not been happening in Washington, D.C.

“I think it’s policy uncertainty,” he says, “I know that’s kind of a cop out if you will, but if you think about it, we’ve still got some uncertainty related to the Farm Bill, even though it does seem to be moving through in a Reconciliation Bill, we still have uncertainty there. We’ve also got a lot of uncertainty with trade and tariffs, so when you have an uncertain policy environment, I think that negatively impacts that.”

Langemeier also says that those who may be the most pessimistic about the future of the farm economy are likely grain producers.

“This is kind of an interesting year, when you think about net-farm income to say the least,” he says. “We’ve got some positive news—particularly in the beef sector. They’ve seen record prices recently. But the crop sector is having another tough year. 2024 was not a particularly great year for crop producers, and it looks like 2025 is going to be very similar.”

Higher input costs remain as the number one concern for America’s farmers. Lower crop and livestock prices ranked second, followed by rising interest rates as farmers’ third biggest concern.

“You can attribute a lot of the tight margins to relatively high breakeven prices,” he says. “Yes, corn and soybean prices are not good, but compared to 2014-2019, they’re still not as bad as that. So, I think the high input cost are really weighing on people’s minds.”

CLICK HERE to read the full results of Purdue’s Ag Economy Barometer Survey for June 2025.

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