John Phipps: What to Watch in 2023
USFR-John's World Look Ahead at 2023
As I mentioned earlier, 2022 left many unresolved issues that may produce 365 days of déjà vu for many.
New variants of COVID sort populations into groups of varying risk tolerance. While this will be a quiet division, it will affect actions of all sorts. Pandemic risk tolerance will foretell how we see politics, technology, and each other, even as another year of infection begins to inure us to the hazards. American life expectancy will likely drop for the third year in a row, as our vast medical system copes with pandemic burdens and chronic health threats like diabetes, opioids, and obesity.
Our stubbornly resilient economy could pull off a soft landing with sluggish growth but no contraction, satisfying neither optimists nor naysayers.
Technology, especially artificial intelligence will fill up more space on screens and pages. Battery technology and solar power complicate energy production and use, with our typical pattern of hundreds of simultaneous solutions blooming like dandelions.
The effect of an energy-starved winter will harden Western Europe against Russia, even as U.S. arms manufacturers shift from seeing the Ukraine War as an invaluable field test to an enormous market. The future of warfare will be forged in that beleaguered country, as Putin risks all on an increasingly unpredictable conflict.
China, meanwhile, will discover how deep the middle-income trap is and how modern cultures can erect workarounds faster than autocracies can create political and economic rules. This domestic contest will hobble Chinese efforts to play a dominant role in world affairs, even as they expand their lead in electric vehicle adoption.
The wild confusion of efforts to counter or ignore climate change won’t change the global trudge toward reduced emissions, but many skeptics in the US and elsewhere will experience reality checks when water doesn’t come out of their taps or weather patterns shift.
Farmers here will face a standoff with suppliers with sticky prices and paper-thin operator margin projections. Farmland buyers will shrug and buy whatever is for sale at now-routine premium prices.
All over the world, the earliest effects of collapsing fertility rates and declining populations will be acknowledged by employers, educators, marketers, and governments with a growing sense of futility for reversing the trends. In short, in 2023, along with perennial surprises, a few familiar chickens will come home to roost.
What are analysts and market watchers predicting for 2023? Find out in Farm Journal's 2023 Outlook Series.
