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Jun. 7, 2024
By Eric Sfiligoj, CropLife magazine | Willoughby, OH -- Each year without fail, the growing season brings its share of trends that "hit" with grower-customers and those that "miss the mark." In 2024, CropLife magazine is building upon this phenomenon to chronicle the findings of our 8th annual CropLife 100 Mid-Year Survey. As we have done each year since the inception of this survey, CropLife started out by asking the nation's top ag retailers their overall outlook on the 2024 growing season based upon the market performance through the spring field work/planting time. This was accomplished by asking respondents to rate the year so far on a scale of one to 10 - with one being "worse than expected" and 10 being "better than expected." And overall, the market is pleased with 2024. A little more than eight out of 10 (86%) survey respondents rated the year so far between a five and a 10. Broken down a bit further, 53% of the nation's top ag retailers said the 2024 growing season rates between a five and seven on their 10-point scale. Another 33% indicated the year so far rates as an eight to 10 in their regions of the country. Compared with the findings from the 2023 CropLife 100 Mid-Year Survey, this represented a 6% increase from the 80% of respondents that said last year rated between a five and 10. Perhaps more significantly, only 14% of respondents are rating the 2024 growing season between a one and a four. Finding Workers Gets a Bit Easier For almost as many years as the CropLife 100 rankings have existed, finding/keeping labor has been the No. 1 issue most ag retailers have faced year in and year out. In fact, according to the 2023 CropLife 100 survey, 34% of respondents rated finding/keeping a workforce as their No. 1 issue of concern during the 2023 calendar year. But it seems that this situation has changed somewhat in 2024, at least marginally. When asked to describe the current ag market's labor, a majority of respondents -- 62% -- said the situation is "about what we expected" for the 2024 growing season. But perhaps significantly, 29% of respondents said their labor issues were "much worse than expected" thus far for the 2024 growing season. This represented a significant downturn compared with the 2023 CropLife 100 Mid-Year Survey results, when 40% of respondents reported that this was their workers search situation. Even better, 9% of ag retailers said that finding workers to man their operations was "better than we expected" so far this year. This represented a 2% improvement from the 7% in the 2023 survey that said finding/keeping workers was easier than they had anticipated. To read the entire article click here. Tweet |
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