According to the Survey of the Agricultural Sector (EOEA), conducted on 2,717 large, medium, and small producers, there hasn't been such a hard drop in investment in agriculture in 16 years as the one recorded in the fourth quarter of 2014.
The survey, which was conducted by the Agricultural Society of Colombia (SAC) in partnership with Finagro, the Agrarian Bank, the Colombian Mercantile Exchange, Corpoica, and Incoder, revealed that the investment levels during the past year were, in average, 6.1% lower than those reported in 2013.
The biggest investment declines in the last quarter were in for the planting of semi annual products such as corn, rice, sorghum and soybeans, which together fell by more than 10.9% points, while coffee fell by 9.9 percentage points.
The proportion of respondents of the livestock sector who said they bought more animals decreased by 8.8% when compared with the same period of 2013.
According to the EOEA, the investment percentages for the purchase of machinery and equipment were below 7% and amounted to only 3.8% in the fourth quarter, down 3.4 percentage points from the same period in 2013.
The investment in infrastructure, which was increasing in the first three quarters of 2014, fell to 3.8% in the last quarter of 2014.
The biggest decline was felt in land preparation, not only perceptually but also proportionally when comparing the period between October and December 2014 with the same period of 2013.
After analysing the quarter, the survey outlined three specific issues: the economic issue, the production issue and the production factors issue.
49.1 percent of the respondents indicated that the producer's economic situation was acceptable and 31.6 percent said it was good. The prospects of the economic situation for the first quarter of 2015 are better than what was expected in the same period of 2014.
The percentage of producers who indicated their production hadn't changed in the fourth quarter of 2014 increased (59.2 percent) when compared to the same period in 2013 (52.5 percent), with a higher recurrence among livestock producers.
The same trend occurs when comparing the reports of 2014 and 2013.
Various production factors
In the reference period, credit stopped having a positive balance within the productive factors and is now unfavourable; the most unfavourable factor in the same period was prices, and the most favourable factor was public order. The negative perception of credit was much higher than in previous years, which is why this is the first time this factor had a negative balance.
Source: portafolio.co