Hacker News Reader

It is the ecconomy. Harvest have been above average around the world the past few years. In turn supply and demand puts prices low. one bad year and harvests will be down and prices way up.

i've been working for John Deere for 15 years - I have seen this cycle several times already. people blame various politics when it happens, but the fundamentals are enough to explain nearly all of this. Anyone in farming knows this and plans for it (not always successfully)

View on HN

> overall operating expenses remain well above pre-2021 levels. Rising costs since 2020 have been driven primarily by sharp increases in interest expenses (+71%), fertilizer (+37%), fuel and oil (+32%), labor (+47%), chemicals (+25%) and maintenance (+27%), alongside notable gains in seed (+18%) and marketing costs (+18%)

These numbers are huge though. I think it is fair to say that this time it may be different.

Looks like inflation to me - we all pay the same interest and everything else has been going up.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com