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Farm bankruptcies on the rise

The director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison says farm bankruptcies are on the rise.

During a recent Soils for Success webinar, Paul Mitchell says 2024 marked the first increase in defaults since 2019.

“The first upswing in a long time.”  He says, “We’re up 55% from ‘23. We’re still low relative to 2019, but more evidence that there’s some headwinds and some farms are struggling.”

He says he expects those numbers to continue to increase this year as farmers continue to deal with high input costs and deflated commodity prices.

“Those are the farmers that are officially filing Chapter 12 bankruptcy.”  He says, “For every one of those farmers, there’s somebody out there that they’re not going bankrupt, but they are definitely being squeezed. They might be liquidating some of the stuff, selling some of the land to refinance everything.”

Mitchell says government aid will alleviate some financial stress, but new trade disruptions and uncertainty around USDA programs add to an already gloomy 2025 economic forecast for farmers.