Farmers Financial Status

Farmers Financial Status

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Farmers National Company spokesperson Randy Dick discusses the land market in relation to farmers. The biggest concern at this time in the agricultural land market is the financial health of producers on a wax poetic about that.

Agriculture on the whole is still in good financial shape. The debt to asset ratio is in stop, but it's still way under what it was even 15 years ago. 80S comparison, which there's not a direct correlation between the 80s and today by any means, because the differences. Overall, it's good. Got farmers that are older, they bought, paid for it and so forth. But yet on the flip side, you see on the aggregate that the working capital has dropped 75 percent from the peak in 2012 or 13. And that's very significant. Well, there's still capital in the market. Most farmers are still OK. But margins are getting tighter. The question becomes a smaller number of individuals that are not financially capable, and that's where the problem kicks off. They have to sell more acreage or as a bank or a lender takes her farmland back or something. If you get more those on the market, then the question is, is there enough demand and buyers to take what comes on the market? If we get a lot more. So I think that working capital decline is very important that that's going the wrong way. If those both keep on the direction they're going, we will be in much tighter, somewhat wider challenge to more than a smaller number of producers.

Previous ReportLetter to Pelosi
Next ReportUS Wool not NZ