Crop Price Cooldown Not All Bad  April 25, 2014 07:00 AM money
series dollars  The retreat in corn prices is not fun for
producers, who must adjust to tighter margins after a strong
five-year run. But it’s not altogether a bad thing, either.
"We’re talking about the cooling down of a very hot industry,"
says Bill York, CEO of AgriBank in St. Paul, Minn.. The bank is
one of the largest within the Farm Credit System. "It’s not
unhealthy that the industry’s slowed down a little bit and we
get back to more normal profitability."  Yet the slowdown has
prompted banker and producer concerns about what happens to
values for the No. 1 farm asset—land—and York’s crystal ball
shows a decline, though modest. "We’re going to see some
softening but at moderate levels, maybe down from the peak to a
trough of 20%, on average," York says. Given the level of growth
in recent years, that is barely leveling off, he adds.   USDA
data underscore that view, with cropland values equal to or
exceeding 20% growth last year alone in N