For the late April intake of the Canadian Farmer Sentiment Index survey, RealAgristudies asked the Insights Panel some hard-hitting questions, such as “Who do you NOT want to win the Stanley Cup?”
From there, though, we jumped back in to the same questions asked in previous surveys to plot a trend line for several topics including how farmers feel about current farm financial performance, their confidence in marketing crops, and the state of their mental health.
Shaun Haney and Justin Funk, co-founders of RealAgristudies, dive in to emerging trends in the video below, including a reversal on future farm financial performance — the sentiment is still negative but it has bumped very close to the neutral line since the last survey. For the first time since the CFSI began in September of 2022, future farm financial performance is higher than current farm financial performance. For those concerned about financial performance in this survey, commodity prices, input prices and borrowing costs remain the reasons.
Farmers are also feeling more confident on marketing crops and livestock, which for both can likely be attributed to improving prices and decent margins, respectively.
This round of the sentiment index also looked at land rental agreements and what farmers expected for land rent rate increases or decreases, and to what extent prices might move.
RealAgristudies asks our farmer Insights Panel to participate four times a year in the Canadian Farmer Sentiment Index. Tap here if you would like to join in sharing your perspective!
