Farm Debt

  Farm income, assets, and equity are all expected to decline nearly three percent in 2016, while farm debt is forecasted to rise about two percent. Agricultural economist Allen Featherstone from Kansas State University. "There are some farmers struggling in order to obtain financing going forward and so certainly, I think there will be some that will choose to retire, more or less indicating that they have had a pretty good run here and so this might be the right time to get out. There will also be some individuals where the higher cost producers may be forced out. Part of this is how long we stay where we are. For example, if there were a supply shock or a demand shock globally, we could jump up really quickly. As you forecast the future, that's not something we need is a lot of farmers going belly up or getting out of the business with an increasing worldwide demand for food. As you indicate, there is a global demand but there needs to be some type of shock either from supply or demand perspective here in the next couple of years to bounce those prices back up. Okay. Let's hope for shock and demand. That would be great. Particularly for the good folks in Kansas who grow all that corn. We grow a lot more corn than we used to. Were kind of moving from the wheat state to the corn state."