USDA Lowers 2025 Farm Income Forecast but Levels Stay Well Above 2024

Sep 08, 2025

The USDA has trimmed its 2025 farm income outlook as falling crop revenues offset record earnings in the livestock sector, but the agency says total income levels remain well above 2024 thanks to strong government support and rising cattle prices.

The latest Economic Research Service (ERS) forecast projects net cash farm income at $180.7 billion for 2025 — a 25.3% increase over 2024 after inflation. That figure is down from February’s estimate of $193.7 billion but still well above the 20-year average, driven in part by $40.5 billion in government payments, the highest level since pandemic-era support in 2020.

Cattle Sector Shines While Crops Slip
USDA’s net farm income forecast — a broader measure that includes depreciation and inventory changes — now stands at $179.8 billion, up 37.2% over 2024. Gains in cattle earnings helped push profits higher even as lower crop returns trimmed earlier income estimates.

Congress allocated nearly $22 billion in disaster relief for 2023–24 losses, with $4.76 billion already paid to more than 329,000 farmers through the Supplemental Disaster Relief Program (SDRP). Conservation program payments also rose to $4.8 billion, a 10.3% increase from last year.

Rising Costs and Farm Debt Add Pressure
While income projections remain historically strong, production expenses are set to climb to $467.4 billion in 2025, up $12 billion (2.6%) from 2024. Labor costs alone have increased by $12 billion over the past three years, while livestock and poultry purchases surged 21.5% to $59.9 billion compared to 2024.

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.