The agricultural Midwest — particularly North and South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska — has been leading the U.S. economic recovery as its banks, businesses and households avoided the worst of the housing bubble’s collapse and the financial crisis that followed. Now the region is getting a further boost from record exports of commodities, driven by demand in China and Russia and a declining dollar. U.S. farm shipments next year may surpass the 2008 record of $115.3 billion, Joe Glauber, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief economist, said last month.
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The U.S. dollar has declined 7.3 percent in the second half of the year as food prices surged after cold in China, drought in Russia and parts of Europe, and flooding in Canada damaged harvests. The spot price of corn has gained 46 percent since July 1, wheat is up 28 percent and soybeans have risen 25 percent, according to the USDA. The S&P GSCI Agriculture Index added 41 percent, compared with the 17 percent advance in the broader S&P GSCI Index of 24 commodities.

Farmland values also are rising. Land prices in some areas of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s district — which includes Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming and parts of Missouri — increased as much as 12 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the biggest jump since the fourth quarter of 2008, the Fed bank said Nov. 12.
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While “the agricultural side of the Midwest is doing well,” the plains states “are very, very different than the industrial Midwest,” she said.

Unemployment in Michigan is 13 percent, the second highest after Nevada at 14.4 percent. The jobless rate in the Detroit metro area has stalled above 13 percent for 21 months.