WYE MILLS - Grain prices, which dropped to a 20-year low this year, are expected to increase next year but not as much as farmers would like, state agriculture officials attending the University of Maryland's annual farm outlook conference here were told yesterday.
Looking at the future for grain, David E. Kenyon, an agricultural professor with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, said prices will most likely rise next year but still fall far short of 1996 levels.
Kenyon predicted corn prices of $2.25 to $2.30 a bushel by spring and perhaps a high as $2.60 a bushel later in the year. Maryland farmers are currently getting $1.80 for their corn.
He was not nearly as optimistic on the outlook for soybean prices.
He predicted that the price of beans will rise from the current level of $4.30 a bushel to a high of about $4.50 next year. He said prices may be held down by large harvests in the United States and South America.
The outlook was not much better for the poultry industry, the largest segment of Maryland's agriculture industry with cash receipts of nearly $530 million last year.
Milton E. Madison, a livestock analyst with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, predicted a flat year for the Delmarva chicken industry. He said there are indications that chicken consumption, which has been rising steadily in the United States for 20 years, has topped out.
As a result, he sees wholesale poultry prices remaining flat next year. He forecasts only a 3 percent rise in poultry production for the nation next year and only a 2.5 percent gain in the Delmarva region.
Bruce L. Gardner, an agricultural economist and chairman of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park, said the only thing that is going to get farmers out of the current situation of big grain surpluses and low prices "is some kind of shock in the market place."
He said that would most likely come in the form of a major crop failure in some major grain-producing area of the world, or if big new customers come into the market, such as China in the 1970s and Russia in later years.
