Are You Ready for Extreme Volatility This Year?
By Lucas Sjostrom
If you thrived in 2014 and managed in 2015, then 2016 is the year of survival. Or, in the words of Dr. David Kohl, “It’s going to be volatility in the extreme,” in the next 5 to 10 years.
Kohl is a Virginia Tech professor emeritus and part owner of Homestead Creamery – a value-added dairy business in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, as well as a well-known speaker.
The five “macro factors” impacting agriculture today according to Kohl are:
- Emerging nations in an economic slowdown
- Biofuels, oil & technology (Ethanol was 8% in 1998 and 30% today)
- Central banking strategy in the U.S. and abroad
- “King” dollar and the duration it stays that way
- Mother nature/weather in the U.S. and globally
To point number one, Kohl said it’s no longer just the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), but also now the KIMT’s (South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, and Turkey) as emerging countries that combine to equal the U.S. economy in size. They represent just 26% of the world economy together, but 53% of the economic growth.
Read more at www.DairyHerd.com.
