U.S. pick up truck sales

U.S. pickup sales are getting a boost from rising farm incomes, giving automakers extra momentum as the auto industry recovers from the worst sales in almost three decades.In the first nine months of the year, pickup sales rose 14 percent to 1.2 million, according to Autodata Corp., a Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey-based researcher. The gain outpaced the 10 percent increase in overall industry deliveries.“Agriculture is helping out,” Mark Fields, Ford Motor Co's president of the Americas, said in an interview at a truck event on a ranch near San Antonio. “When farmers have a good harvest, they invest in their businesses and a pickup is a tool.”Grain prices have surged after droughts and flooding around the world ruined crops in such places as Russia and Canada. U.S. agricultural exports rose to $69.8 billion from $61 billion during the first eight months of 2010, according U.S. Department of Agriculture data. That rising trade contributed to a projected 24 percent gain in new farm income in 2010, the USDA said in August.

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