Last year, agribusiness and most business sectors road an economic roller coaster. The 2009 outlook is tough to forecast, according to a Sacramento Business Journal article that used the director of the UC Agriculture Issues Center Dan Sumner as its primary source.

The bulk of the article is blocked on the Business Journal's Web site, accessible, it says, only to paid subscribers. But the Internet makes it available elsewhere, such as on the Wichita Business Journal's Web site (an example of the media's own economic conumdrum).

In the article, written by Celia Lamb, Sumner commented on tree nuts and wine, which he said could be vulnerable if consumers decide to cut back on luxuries, and grain markets. Corn, he noted, was priced at $3.98 per bushel in January 2008, and rose to $5.47 in June. By November, it fell to $3.94 per bushel.

“Feed prices look like they’re going to be much more moderate (in 2009) than we would have thought,” Sumner was quoted. “That is good news for California, (because) we’re big in the dairy market and we’re not as big in the grain market.”

Sumner offered some good news to the agriculture industry in general.

“I’m thinking net farm income will hold up in agriculture better than the rest of the economy,” he was quoted.