USDA Economic News

USDA Economic News

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
USDA's Economic Research Service released its farm income and financial forecasts, which..."measures, forecasts and explains indicators of economic performance for the U.S. farm sector." That was ERS economist Carrie Litkowski. "We'll start by looking at the farm sector as a whole, which is comprised of two million farms who operate, 900 million acres of land. With this release, we're also converting our 2018 forecast into an estimate that incorporates annual state level data from USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service on production and prices and expense data gathered through the 2018 Agricultural Resource Management Survey."

USDA deputy chief economist Ward Preston.

"So the balance sheet does remain strong. If we look at it in terms of debt to asset ratio, the debt to asset ratio is estimated at 13 and a half percent and the debt to equity ratio is estimated at fifteen point six percent. So overall, for the farm sector, the likelihood of default remains relatively low despite the increases that we've seen in debt since 2012. Certainly nothing compared to what we saw during the farm crisis of the 1980s. But that's not to say that some individual farms are not facing stress. But as a sector, we haven't seen the indicators of severe financial stress.

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