The economic forecast for 2025 shows stabilization concerning prices in the agriculture industry. During Thursday’s Agriculture Development Forum, hosted by the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (NCDA&CS), Dr. Jeffrey Dorfman, professor of agriculture and resource economics at North Carolina State University and previously an economist for the state of Georgia, gave his annual address on the economic outlook for agriculture in 2025. 

“I’d like to give you good news, but fair to middling 2025 is sort of where I’m at, which for some of you (…) that would be an improvement over 2024,” said Dorfman. “So, fair to middling might be fine with some of you and starting a good trend, but I think what we’re seeing is input costs have eased (…), but commodity prices have been sort of falling down, particularly for crops. It’s a good year to be growing tobacco and raising animals. It’s not as good a year for some of the other crops, but we’re going to get rid of some cost pressure, and that should help.” 

During last year’s address, Dr. Dorfman stated that while inflation would be coming down, we would unlikely see a price decline. This year, Dorfman indicated that while prices aren’t coming down, they aren’t likely to be going back up either, so farmers will see prices stabilize in the agriculture industry. 

According to Dorfman, the expected stabilization of prices will allow farmers to determine at what prices to sell their products to turn a profit. In the last few years, production costs have changed so rapidly that it was challenging for farmers to even know at what price to sell their products. As prices stabilize this year, farmers can pause and determine their production costs and at what price they need to sell their products to make a profit. 

One thing that has not changed from 2024 is that families only keep up with inflation by taking on more jobs — one-income families have now become two-income families.

“I found an interesting way to find out what’s going on in agriculture is to listen to John Deere,” said Dorfman. “They are a big publicly traded company, and once every three months, they hold a day where they tell investors how they think their business is going and if John Deere says business is going great then agriculture’s probably doing great, and that’s not what John Deere said this year.”

“The reality is farmers, right now, are just trying to survive and hang on until a better year.”

Dr. Jeffrey Dorfman

Sales at the Moline, Ill. tractor manufacturer are down 20-25% this year, and they really haven’t had anything good to say about 2025, according to Dorfman, confirming his prediction that 2025 will be a “fair to middling year.”

“This means they’re not really in the mood to buy a new $1 million piece of equipment,” he said. “And so when John Deere tells us things are looking up, that’ll be sort of a lagging sign because we got to make the money first before we go buy the equipment properly, but their outlook tells us just let’s get through 2025.” 

Finally, he advised farmers on how to get the most money out of their crops this year. 

“It’s not enough to get rainfall on your farm; you have to get the rain when you need it, so this year, you need to make sure you’re marketing your crops at the right time,” said Dorfman.  

Carolina Journal photo by Katie Zehnder.

The slide above depicts the low and high averages for each crop in 2025. Numbers are based on statewide averages, and farmers should adjust these estimates depending on their location.  

Dorfman advised farmers to try and sell when they see prices approaching the numbers on the right side of the chart. He even advised utilizing forward contracting and futures markets when possible to lock in those rates, emphasizing that this is not a year to “wait and see.”

“The point is not to grow as much as possible; it’s to make money,” said he said. “If you want to be in business growing as much as possible next year, you have to make money, so make sure you’re farming for value and not volume.”