Productive but Priced Out: Why Input Prices Matter for US Corn Competitiveness

The National Corn Growers Association today released the second installment of a series related to the prices U.S. farmers pay for crop inputs compared to Brazilian farmers. This report explores further the impact of input prices on U.S. corn competitiveness in a global market.

"U.S. farmers are the most productive, and efficient, producers of corn in the world," says Krista Swanson, NCGA's chief economist. "But the advantages that should be gained from producing more output with fewer inputs are minimized, and sometimes erased, due to the difference in pricing structures."

As the report notes, from an economic perspective, producing more output with fewer inputs should create a durable competitive advantage. However, this has not proven to be true in recent years. Increasingly, higher input costs are undermining some of the advantages U.S. growers have earned through superior productivity and efficiency.

"Looking at per-bushel or per-acre costs does not tell a complete story," says Swanson. "That's why we spent months digging into input costs for U.S. and Brazilian farmers on a per-unit basis. And we found that U.S. farmers are put at a disadvantage when it comes to paying for the same or similar inputs to grow a crop."

Read the report here.