by Tyne Morgan, AgWeb.com

The theme that consumed the crops side of agriculture in 2024 was this: tighter margins with producers from coast to coast searching for ways to cut back

“It’s no secret 2024 was a tough year across the U.S., and California was no different,” says Clayton Houchin, CEO of the Buttonwillow Warehouse Company, which is located in Bakersfield, Calif. “A lot of the crops we produce were under significant price constraints while costs were going up. It was tough, tough recipe for a lot of farmers.”

That tough recipe also impacted farmers in the Upper Midwest — and it could be a similar story for 2025.

“Growers realize the margins are very tight on corn and soybeans and also wheat. They are looking for places to intelligently cut,” says Steve Hoffman, an independent crop consultant with InDepth Agronomy in eastern Wisconsin.

The First Place to Cut: Machinery

AgWeb recently polled farmers, asking what cost-cutting measures they plan to implement on their farm this year.

Out of the more than 1,300 farmers who responded to the online poll, the most glaring answer was machinery. Nearly 80 percent of farmers say that’s an area they’re likely to cut.

Slow Technology Upgrades

According to the latest AgWeb poll, 60 percent of farmers also say slowing technology upgrades is likely 9 percent said that decision is unlikely.

“I think if you look at the last five years of how much technology has been put out into the marketplace pre-covid, all the way through Covid and where we’re at now, the amount of technology that got produced during that time frame was epic,” says Seyour. “It was probably the highest amount of technology that got produced and put to the marketplace, across the board, in my 20-year career in the equipment business.”

Opt to Use More Generic Products

While equipment seems to be an area in focus, the AgWeb poll found more farmers are adjusting their agronomic decisions based on how margins look today, with 61 percent saying they’re likely to use generic products.

“There are expensive programs and there are programs that either through generics or maybe chemistries that are been on the market a few years that may do just as good a job as some of the premium new programs,” says Hoffman. “That’s definitely a place where growers can still get good weed control by smart shopping, looking at alternative herbicide programs.”

Direction of Herbicide Prices in 2025

Prices of key herbicide prices like glyphosate plummeted last year. And it’s left farmers trying to navigate where prices go from here.

“We’re coming off a kind of a funky part of the cycle, obviously, where we had an excess of supply globally coming into the market. Distributors cut back on their sales. It caused a huge amount of impact on the earnings, but there was no kind of issues with production coming out of China, which is really that hub for a lot of these active ingredients,” says Samuel Taylor, who’s executive director of research into the farm inputs in the North African market for Rabobank.

Reduce Fertilizer Rates

Herbicides may not be an area where farmers cut back on the amount of product they use, butt the AgWeb poll found 40 percent of farmers to plan o reducing fertilizer rates.

“And i think one of the first places that as we talk to growers, we talk about phosphorus and potassium, maybe some of those rates can be cut back,” says Hoffman.

To read the entire article click here.