MSU Ag Outlook conference prepares producers for year ahead

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- As row crop producers filed into the Mill Conference Center last December for the start of Mississippi State University’s Row Crop Short Course, news was breaking from Washington, D.C., that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had announced a $12 billion farm aid package that would directly affect many of them in 2026.

Producers attending the 2026 Mississippi Agricultural Outlook Conference Jan. 13 at the same venue caught a glimpse of what else might be in store for the state’s agricultural economy this year.

The annual conference, hosted by the MSU Extension Service and the MSU Department of Agricultural Economics, featured forecasts from agricultural economists and policy experts in farm incomes, policy, trade, farmland, budgets, row crops, livestock, labor and specialty crops.

Keynote speaker was Alejandro Plastina, Frank Miller Professor of Agricultural Economics and director of the Rural and Farm Finance Policy Analysis Center at the University of Missouri, or MU. He delivered sobering news for row crop producers hoping for a 2026 rebound after low commodity prices and rising input expenses led to a 9% drop in the value of row crop production in Mississippi last year.

While the $12 billion in Farmer Bridge Assistance Program payments is expected to go out next month, the relief will not fully make whole many U.S. producers whose farm incomes fell last year, he said. In addition, Plastina forecasted similar conditions for 2026 based on projections from MU’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, or FAPRI-MU.

“Even if we add $12 billion to that net farm income, that would take us from $146 billion to $158 billion and that would still mean a 10 to 11% reduction in farm income, or $18 to $19 billion less in net farm income in 2026 than in 2025,” Plastina said.

“We have to remember that this level of farm income is higher than most of the previous years,” he said. “We would expect (in 2026) lower farm income in general, government payments will play a major role, and the regional disparities in farm income, I think, will be exacerbated.”

Guest speaker Andrew Muhammad, Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, gave an overview of the state of foreign trade relations in the U.S.

In recent years and under multiple administrations, he said, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, has steered more resources to its Foreign Agricultural Service to increase export promotion initiatives in countries other than China. He said this is a practice that should continue.

“I do not see the Chinese market coming back to its peak level,” Muhammad said. “The only way to remedy that is to be intentional and aggressive about selling U.S. products in places other than China, particularly the emerging markets of the world.”

MSU Extension agricultural economist Will Maples said at any rate, growers of soybeans and other popular Mississippi row crops, including corn, cotton and rice, can expect another challenging year for their balance sheets.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to be a down year for commodities, especially cotton and rice. They’re in a tough situation. The outlook is not great in terms of prices,” Will Maples said. “This is probably one of those years where minimizing losses is more important than anything. Hopefully, the tools and information we gave producers here will help them better manage and understand the financial health of their operations.”

MSU Extension Director Angus Catchot noted the conference was geared to address the industry’s ongoing financial challenges. This year, the event expanded to two days, the first of which offered producers educational sessions on farm financial statements, enterprise budgets and recordkeeping tools among other key financial considerations in farming.

“There are some things that we can control and some things that we can’t control. We can’t really control commodity prices. We can’t control equipment costs or labor shortages,” Catchot said. “We can give sound, research-based advice that’s going to make our growers money, and I think we do that every day.

“A lot of the program for this outlook conference has changed, going into the direction of marketing and risk management,” he added. “I applaud our Extension personnel and invited speakers who came here for that specifically, because that is an area that we have the expertise and we can help on.”

Soybean markets struggle

Plastina noted export demand for soybeans -- Mississippi’s largest row crop -- has been reduced due to trade disputes between the U.S. and China and China buying more soybeans from Brazil at cheaper prices.

Ending stocks for this crop domestically are projected up, he said, but the forecasted marketing year average price from the USDA World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, or WASDE, was $10.20 per bushel. That amount would be higher than the $10 per bushel in 2025 but 30 cents lower than the previous projection from WASDE. At $10.16 per bushel, the latest estimate from FAPRI-MU was slightly less optimistic.

“We didn’t sell a bushel of beans to China until October in 2025, and that is historically something we’ve never done,” Plastina said. “We do have that soybean trade deal in place with China as a handshake agreement. Based on news reports and trader information, they’re at about 10 million metric tons currently and for them to get another 2 million is highly likely. For the next three years, they’ve committed to buying 25 million metric tons over time.” 

At the MSU Row Crop Short Course in December, Mississippi Soybean Promotion Board Chairman Wayne Dulaney said tariffs imposed by the U.S. on other countries last year had little effect on the financial challenges soybean growers faced. He also expects the amount of relief from the one-time $12 billion package to be limited.

“We started planting soybeans in 2025 knowing we were at a level that we were not going to make any money off a soybean crop. People want to blame it on tariffs, but prices were already low before we even had any tariffs, so they didn’t drive it down much more,” Dulaney said.

“The biggest question is how they are going to break (the farm aid payments) up. If we’re looking at getting $40 an acre or so for soybeans, it’s going to be nice and I’m not turning it down, but it’s not going to save anything,” he said.

Dulaney also indicated growers of the crop have, in a way, become a victim of their own success.

“We’re just getting really good at what we do,” Dulaney said. “We’re overproducing and making good yields, and we’ve got to come up with some more demand in the U.S.”

Livestock prices at all-time highs

MSU Extension livestock economist Josh Maples noted that livestock producers observed their fifth consecutive year of higher annual cattle market prices, and 2026 receipts are likely to be just as strong. Retail prices compiled by the USDA Bureau of Labor Statistics for fresh beef rose above $9 per pound in 2025.

“It doesn’t happen very often where you have five straight years of higher prices year over year over year. It’s actually very rare for that to happen,” he said. “This trend is starting to change producers’ expectations.”

Lower feed costs tell part of the story, but demand has remained steady while cow-calf inventory has declined. Costs of production have increased, but strong prices have more than offset those costs, he said.

“When we reach points like we’re in right now with low inventory, the signal has to pass all the way back up through the cow-calf supply chain to the producer via strong prices to tell them to produce more,” Josh Maples said. “Beef cow culling numbers are down about 17% from 2024. That is an indication that producers are holding on to those cows after culling heavily in 2022, 2023 and 2024.”

Long production lags mean high beef prices for consumers now reflect tighter supplies driven by low cattle prices years ago, he said.

“It takes years for more beef to be produced. Beef supplies are tight right now because cattle producers went through 2016 to 2023 with very low or negative profit margins, which forced them to reduce production. Severe drought also forced some producers to liquidate during that stretch.

“The stronger cattle prices now are needed to encourage producers to expand production, which will ultimately lead to more beef available in a few years,” Josh Maples said.

He also said it is not just a supply story as consumer demand for beef remains strong despite the volatility of consumer sentiment.

“Prices alone don’t shift demand. They reflect demand. We’ve had very strong beef demand over the last few years,” Josh Maples said. “People are still eating a lot of beef even at these higher prices. The high beef prices today are driven partially by tighter beef supplies but also partially by consumers’ strong appetite for U.S. beef.”