Ag job layoffs only beginning due to corn prices

The old ConAgra turkey plants in northern Colorado, now owned by Smithfield and called Butterball, are laying off 800 employees, due to high corn prices and the damages to the crop and turkey farms from the Iowa floods.

This is not small potatoes to a town the size of Longmont, Colorado. While not highly paid, primary wage earner-type jobs, the Butterball jobs are still supporting lots of families at least partially, that will suddenly not be spending into the local economy. There are lots of high-tech jobs in the computer and technology sector in the greater Longmont vicinity, but without a lot of retraining, former Butterball employees are not likely to be able to fill them.

This is only a single, isolated layoff. Across rural America there will be many others, as high corn prices and a short corn crop due to the floods, leave agribusinesses reeling. Ethanol plants themselves are likely spots for layoffs, because the corn crop might well be short enough, and expensive enough, that they will not be able sustain full production.

Livestock numbers, including cattle, hogs and poultry, are dropping, because producers can't afford the corn to sustain present production levels. Farmers who had been looking forward to a huge payday from their corn crop, have lost valuable acreage due to flooding and must plant a substantially less lucrative crop like milo or sudan grass, because they've lost too much growing season already, to produce corn.

Whether we suffer a full blown ag depression remains to be seen in the next three months, but there will be negative effects and reduced income, which will ripple across the whole U.S. economy.