Economic growth and inflation will slow in the coming months, but commodity prices are likely to be volatile as the world’s farmers try to catch up with the global appetite for food, said two leading agricultural economists on Wednesday. “I think that 2023 still looks pretty strong” for U.S. farm income, said Nathan Kaufman, the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s principal expert on agriculture economics.
Joseph Glauber of the IFPRI think tank said that relatively slim global grain inventories as the growing season nears in the Northern Hemisphere would mean continued volatility in commodity prices.
“I think the bottom line here is … price volatility will continue throughout the year, and I think that means prices, while they’re going to be down hopefully from the spikes that we saw last February, they’re still going to remain high, certainly relative to the pre-2020 years,” said Glauber.
Slower economic growth will constrain inflation this year, said Kaufman and Glauber in remarks online to the North American Agricultural Journalists.