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How do inflation, interest rates compare to '80s?

Economist Darren Hudson comments on agriculture's economic climate, the cotton market and geopolitical concerns and how interest rates and inflation compare to 10 years ago and the 1980s.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

December 15, 2023

1 Min Read
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How do inflation and interest rates in 2023 compare to the 1980s? Economist Darren Hudson weighs in. Shelley E. Huguley

How do today's inflation and interest rates compare to 10 years ago or, better yet, the 1980s? Economist Darren Hudson weighed in on this topic following his presentation at the 2023 Deltapine NPE Summit in San Antonio, Texas.

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"One of the questions I often get is this relation between where we are today versus where we were in the past," Hudson told Farm Press. "If you'd have told me 10 years ago, 70- or 80-cent cotton was horribly unprofitable, I probably would have laughed."

Listen to Hudson, the Combest Endowed chair and Davis College of Agriculture associate dean at Texas Tech University, discussing how times have changed.

Hudson also provided an economic update discussing market concerns, understanding the difference between risk management and marketing your crop, and geopolitical concerns. Hear what he had to say.

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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