By Ryan Hanrahan
U of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture Mary Hightower reported that “farm bankruptcy filings are rising in 2025, a sign that agriculture is facing the same high financial pressures it saw pre-pandemic, said Ryan Loy, extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.”
“‘We’ve had 259 filings in the United States between April 1 of 2024 and March 31 of this year,” Loy said, adding that the number of filings in the first quarter of 2025 outpaced those of the same period in 2024,” Hightower reported. “‘We’ve already beat last year in terms of Q1 national filings,’ he said. ‘Once you see this on a national level, it’s a clear sign that financial pressures that we saw before in the 2018 and ‘19 are kind of re-emerging.'”
“Filing under Chapter 12 of the federal bankruptcy code gives farmers and family fishermen an opportunity to propose and carry out a plan to repay all or part of their debts,” Hightower reported. “Chapter 12, introduced in 1986 at the height of the farm crisis, was designed with farms in mind and offers an alternative to a Chapter 7 filing, which a farm’s assets are liquidated to pay creditors.”
Why Are Bankruptcy Filings Increasing?
“A large part of the pressure stems from the fact that ‘commodity prices are back at levels where they were in the 2018-2019 era,’ said Scott Stiles, extension economics program associate for the Division of Agriculture,” Hightower reported. “Adding to the pressure cooker are input costs seed, fertilizer, pest management tools and diesel that never seem to decline much or for a long period.”
Source : illinois.edu