North Dakota State University Extension Service has released its projections for 2013 planning prices for most major crops and livestock.

Short and long-term price projections are made for wheat, durum, oats, feed barley, malting barley, oil sunflowers, nonoil sunflowers, corn, soybeans, canola, flaxseed, winter wheat, dry beans, dry peas, lentils, alfalfa hay and mixed hay.

Price projections are also made for beef steers and heifers at various weights, cull cows, slaughter steers, slaughter hogs, slaughter ewes, slaughter lambs, feeder lambs and milk.

The estimated short-term planning prices should be used as a guide in setting price expectations for 2013 production," says Ron Haugen, NDSU farm economist. "These planning prices can be used for preparing annual enterprise budgets and annual whole-farm cash-flow projections. The short-term prices should not be used for planning capital purchases or expansion alternatives that would extend beyond the next production year."

Unfortunately, the use of short-term planning prices to make long-term decisions is common. This practice is not recommended because current supply/demand conditions rarely continue for long periods of time and are a poor indicator of future trends.

The long-term planning prices are valuable for evaluating alternative plans that affect the farm or ranch business for more than one year. Both individual yearly price forecasts and long-term average prices are presented. The long-term planning prices were derived from annual average price forecasts made by the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. The U.S. price estimates reported in the 2012 Baseline Brie?ng Paper,  November 2012, were adjusted  using historical relationships to re?ect North Dakota farm gate prices.

The publication "Plotting a Course 2013: is on the Web.

Source: NDSU