Minnesota median farm income down again

Minnesota farmers saw thin profits in 2017 for the fifth consecutive year, with one-third of them losing net worth and median farm income down again compared with 2016. “There is a lot of slow bleeding going on out there,” said University of Minnesota Extension economist Dale Nordquist, who worked on the latest analysis of farm finances. “It becomes a crisis for some individual farms who don’t have a strong enough balance sheet to withstand this extended downturn.”The marginal profits don’t come as a surprise, since bumper crops in the U.S. and other countries have created an oversupply of grain that has kept prices depressed for several years.Minnesota farmers have been able to weather the down cycle in part with record profits they earned between 2010 and 2012, Nordquist said. Every farm has a different cost structure, though, and some are doing better than others.Median farm income in the state has remained between $27,000 and $42,000 annually since 2013.