By Sean Ellis
Idaho’s farming sector is a tale of two agricultural economies right now.
On the one hand, the livestock sector, particularly cattle and calves, is doing good. On the other hand, almost everything else, on the crop side, is struggling financially.
“Cattle is king right now,” University of Idaho agricultural economist Brett Wilder said during U of I’s annual Idaho Ag Outlook Seminar Dec. 17.
But, he added, agriculture overall “continues to suffer from input inflation” and depressed farm-level prices.
About 125 people attended the ag outlook seminar, which included several presenters who provided a look at what is going on now in the agricultural world and offered projections for what 2026 would bring.
The seminar could be summed up like this: cattle good, everything else bad.
U of I agricultural economists estimate Idaho’s agricultural industry brought in $12.1 billion in farm-gate revenue in 2025. That would be a record and it also, by itself, does not tell the whole story.
That record total, if it holds, will have been achieved largely on the back of Idaho’s livestock industry. On the crop side, every major crop in Idaho is experiencing lower prices and sometimes dramatically lower prices.
According to a producer sentiment survey by Purdue University, the biggest concern of farmers last year was input costs, said Xiaoli Etienne, a U of I researcher who focuses on commodity risk management.
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