I like to start conversations about the future with this Chinese proverb: “When the winds of change blow, some build walls while others build windmills.”
Are you building walls while the world changes around you? Or are you building windmills?
虽然农业的变化往往来得很慢，但它终将到来. We need to be prepared for it. The global research team at CHS sees several drivers to watch as you execute on your business strategy over the next five years. Here’s six trends to watch.
1. Outside forces matter
农业并不能与世界上正在发生的事情绝缘, so we need to pay attention to outside forces at work.
U.S. 2008-2009年经济衰退后，经济在很长一段时间内相对平静. 事实上，我想说我们经历了15年的强劲牛市。
- Equities markets rose steadily and considerably. That put money in pockets and fueled 401(k) plans.
- Unemployment declined to record lows.
- 由于联邦货币政策，利率接近于零.
Fast-forward to today and we are in the midst of spiking inflation and broad market concerns over Federal Reserve restrictive actions to control it. 这些快速变化的宏观经济力量已经迅速蔓延到其他市场, including commodities.
In early 2022, as the Federal Reserve began to pursue rate hikes, equities markets went “risk off,“退出市场，带走大宗商品. As a result, corn moved from more than $8 per bushel to roughly $6 per bushel in a few months. The typical fundamental drivers that influence ag prices — planting progress, weather, etc. — didn’t matter.
Bottom line: The trillion-dollar equities markets trumped the billion-dollar commodities markets, 证明农产品并非不受外部经济力量的影响. 而在2021年之前，大宗商品以外市场的影响基本减弱, 在当前的经济环境下，我们不能忽视他们.
2. Labor market upset
劳动力将继续成为农业和全球的热门话题. We have seen three major drivers behind limited U.S. labor availability:
- When the pandemic hit, baby boomers tapped out of the labor market, taking more than 3 million people out of the workforce.
- Between 1 million and 2 million people of prime working age (25 to 54) dropped out of the workforce to care for family members during the pandemic.
- Immigration reform in 2016 made it difficult for new workers to enter the country to meet labor demand.
麦肯锡(McKinsey)最近的一份报告指出，对于那些仍在工作的人来说，期望已经发生了变化 & Company study. 过去对传统员工来说最重要的是职业发展和发展, compensation, meaningful work — is less important to newer employees. 这些新员工将工作场所的灵活性排在他们愿望清单的首位, followed by compensation, meaningful work and support for health and well-being.
当我们考虑为农业吸引和留住人才时，规则已经改变了. Members of the latest generation to enter the workforce — often called Gen Z — are tech-savvy, 有自己动手(DIY)的心态，并具有很强的竞争力. They want a say in decision-making — after all, they grew up having a say in family decisions — and they demand career pathways and details on where they’re going and how they’ll get there.
3. Supply shifts
Crop input prices and, perhaps just as important, availability will continue as a key theme in agriculture.
On the crop protection side, most active ingredients now come from China and are subject to what’s going on in that country in terms of both production and demand. Supply chain upsets, both current and future, will impact how much product is delivered to U.S. agriculture and at what price.
作物营养品生产是另一个全球性产业，尽管美国不支持.S. is a fairly significant fertilizer producer, 中国的化肥产量约占世界总产量的15%. Unfortunately, our demand is greater than our production, 因此，我们受到全球贸易和产品竞争的影响.
While we import crop nutrients from Canada, much also comes from the Middle East and North Africa — that’s where normally cheap natural gas feedstocks for fertilizer production are available to help us close the demand gap.
All these market and industry factors combine to impact U.S. 农作物生产者通过波动，如果不增加，生产成本.
Iowa State University researchers say soybean input costs rose 15% and corn input costs rose about 20% in 2022 — and fertilizer costs were 23% of corn production costs and 15% of soybean costs. 随着可再生柴油运动和种植作物的成本, do you switch from corn to soybeans?
We’ll need to gain efficiencies. Those could come from application technology advances like spot spraying or from genetic shifts like short corn that reduce nitrogen and crop protection needs and make the crop more resilient to volatile weather.
4. Renewable diesel renaissance
在大宗商品领域，出现新的需求来源是罕见的. Lightning already struck once for agriculture in the mid-2000s with ethanol as a fuel oxygenate and additive for gasoline. 它将以大豆和可再生柴油第二次出击.
Today, U.S. farmers produce 15 billion bushels of corn every year and 5 billion bushels go into ethanol, fully one-third of our corn production. But is the ethanol arc waning?
到2022年，美国有超过5万个电动汽车充电站.S. ——几乎是E85车站数量的12倍.S. Department of Energy. Federal government and industry predictions say we could have 25 million new EVs on the ground by 2030, or about 30% of all new car sales.
How much corn would be displaced if EVs rise as predicted and gas and ethanol demand decreases? 2500万辆汽车，每年550加仑的燃料，10%的燃料是乙醇. That displaces 2 million to 2.5 million acres of corn. 每年在一两个州禁止种植都可能造成如此大的衰退!
虽然电动汽车将继续占据新闻头条，但对玉米的需求仍将存在. And that’s not taking into account the impact of potentially moving to E15 blends or sustainable aviation fuel, which is derived from ethanol. In short, corn demand is not going away any time soon.
Soybean markets are responding to renewable diesel demand fueled by low-carbon fuel standards. 如果你把现在正在扩大的大豆压榨能力加起来, 我们将需要900万到1100万英亩或更多的额外大豆来满足需求.
Where will all those beans come from? We export roughly half of the beans we produce in the U.S. 今天，你可以预见，这些土地中的许多将被重新用于国内需求. And the soy crush byproduct is no longer soybean oil; longer term, 我们得想办法怎么处理这些豆粕.
5. Deglobalization changes the game
This might be the most important factor to affect agriculture long term: a transition away from a global world order toward deglobalization. Four countries matter significantly in agriculture, and their actions will determine what happens next.
A major exporter of corn and soybeans, the United States has long enjoyed effective infrastructure to get crops from the country’s interior to the coasts. 我们是农业技术的创新者和农作物投入的主要进口商.
Watch for continued focus on exports, as well as reimagining domestic energy production through use of feedstocks like soybean oil. 这可能导致大豆从出口转向国内消费. 相反，将需要豆粕的长期买家.
A prolific producer of soybeans and secondarily of corn, Brazil 拥有大量土地并且不怕将其转化为农业用途, including for industrial-scale farming with farms of 5,000 to 10,000 acres or more.
According to the most recent Brazilian ag census in 2017, at that point, the country already had more than 51,000 farms with more than 1,000 hectares (2,470 acres). 而南美洲的大豆产量继续增长, weather effects have reduced yield there, just as they have in North America.
Watch for continued emphasis on large-scale production and exporting core grains and oilseeds, particularly corn. With deglobalization comes the opportunity for bilateral trade agreements like the recent announcement that China will accept Brazilian corn. But also be mindful of currency fluctuations between the U.S. 美元和巴西货币，这可能会产生重大影响.
China is a demand sink for all commodities. Its increasingly industrial livestock sector is shifting rations and that is changing demand for soybeans, soybean meal and corn. 中国还是化肥和作物保护成分的主要生产国，美国一直在对这些产品进行出口.S. needs.
关注中国对其五年计划的皇冠hga010安卓二维码以及该国不断变化的人口结构. 中国一直致力于扩大农业，实现自给自足的目标.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau International Database, by 2030, 中国65岁以上的人口将超过15岁以下的人口. That will likely create a tipping point for commodity demand, if it hasn’t already happened.
Much of the world’s wheat is grown in Russia and Ukraine and we expect that to continue. 这些国家是化肥贸易的关键，也是皇冠hga010安卓二维码领域的重要参与者. 因为他们的产品必须进出黑海, 他们的海运渠道比我们美国少.S.
Watch for continued difficulty in market access and potentially crop production as the Russian war in Ukraine continues.
全球市场和地缘政治形势每天都在变化, 因此，当你通过年度周期制定计划时，你需要记住它们. 明天和今天不一样，所以要勇于改变，让它为你所用.
6. Technology advances in agriculture
Technology continues to advance how we work, and agriculture is not immune to those advances. Viewing and embracing technology as a competitive advantage versus simply a cost of doing business will continue to propel the most successful enterprises.
推动农业技术变革的主要发展包括:
Robotic process automation (RPA)
RPAs are essentially robots loaded onto computer systems to do repetitive transactional work. Anything a human can do with a computer, an RPA — or bot — can execute, 包括处理电子邮件和准备发票. 这种效率可能有助于抵消当前和即将到来的劳动力短缺.
Drones
You’ve probably seen drones doing agronomic scouting. 他们还可以测量粮食产量或计算牲畜和其他库存. 无人机被用来检查电梯和其他设施, 它通过让人们远离脚手架和电梯来提高安全性.
Autonomous vehicles
According to the American Trucking Associations, we will have a shortage of 160,000 truck drivers by 2031. As an industry, we will be forced to look at technologies that will help us fill that gap from an efficiency standpoint and safety perspective. Autonomous tractors have been launched and retailers like Walmart are testing autonomous delivery vehicles between distribution centers and retail stores.
The time to embrace technology is now — it will transform the industry but requires focus and investment if we are going to use technology to meet the challenges we face.
