12/30/08 Wow, what a year!

As 2008 comes to an end we're dragging ourselves across the finish line battered and bruised. We're in the worst economic crisis since this nation faced the Great Depression nearly 80 years ago. Think about the roller coaster ride we took this year with commodity prices soaring. Wheat and corn in territory we hadn't seen before. Record setting ag exports, profits on the farm. There was adequate water for Idaho irrigation needs this year, no major problems there. The state didn't burn up like it did in the summer of 2007. We ended up with new rules and the resumption of ag field burning. There was the tedious work of analyzing thousands and thousands of soil samples with no more potato cyst nematodes discovered. But these last three months have been filled with uncertainty. We smiled as record high fuel prices had crashed by year's end but so did stock and commodity prices, and so did thousands and thousands of jobs. Credit has tightened, input costs are still high and the recession will take us into 2009 with no idea what the future holds. Through it all, farmers and ranchers will still plan for spring, buy seed, fuel and fertilizer, try to economize where possible, look at new methods when practical and do as they have done for generations&feed the world. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott