There are many changing dynamics in the business of agriculture, but today's challenges are not similar to the 1980s, according to Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey. Northey was one of several speakers in Humboldt Monday to address about 60 farmers at a Bank Iowa-sponsored seminar. Northey said 2015 was a year in which prices for livestock and grain took a dive, making the challenge for clearing a profit much more difficult while cost to produce the product continued at the same level. “Folks ask me if this is the 1980s all over again? I tell them no. We don’t have people leveraged like they were back then and we don’t have the high interest rates we had back then. We’ve had some good years recently and farmers have been very responsible in making sure their machinery was updated and they put some money away,” Northey said. “There’s a lot of reasons why we aren’t like that today.” “And, we have a worldwide demand that still is strong," he said.
