Despite the recent floods, things are looking pretty good for Wisconsin farmers.
Retail food prices remain stable during the third quarter, according to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation’s Marketbasket survey. But could heavy summer rains and floods in the state impact fourth quarter prices? Casey Langan with the Farm Bureau says the biggest issue is a delay in the harvest in the heavily flooded areas.
Langan says this year is completely different than last year when we had a cool summer, prolonging the growing period for crops. Then, it rained in October, which limited the harvest period in November. “We had a summer where we had hot weather and timely rains, and now we’ve had a pretty good fall throughout most of the state. The crops were ready to go and they were early in reaching maturity… In some parts of the state there’s been a lot of harvesting already going on.”
In fact, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, over 80-percent of corn across the state was mature with about one fourth of corn for grain already harvested. Apples and soybeans are good, and the cranberry harvest is showing good color and size of the fruit.
Langan believes all the heavy rains and flooding won’t affect the grocery prices in the fourth quarter. However, he says, if the price of oil goes up, so will the price of food.