U.S. Farm Bankruptcies: A 10-Year Deep Dive (2016–2025)

Executive Summary

Farm bankruptcies in the United States, measured by Chapter 12 filings, have moved through three distinct phases over the past decade.

A rising-stress phase from 2016 to 2019 culminated in a recent peak of roughly 595 filings in 2019, driven by the U.S.–China trade war, a multi-year dairy crisis, and depressed prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, and milk.

A relief phase from 2020 to 2023 saw filings collapse to 139 — the lowest level since Chapter 12 became a permanent part of the Bankruptcy Code in 2005. Massive ad-hoc federal aid (Market Facilitation Program, CFAP, PPP), low interest rates, the Russia-Ukraine commodity price spike, and a record net farm income of about $182 billion in 2022 all combined to give producers an unusual cushion.

A renewed-stress phase from 2024 onward reversed that trend sharply. Filings rose 55% in 2024 to 216 and another 46% in 2025 to 315. Q1 2025 alone produced 88 filings — already 96% above Q1 2024 — and the USDA's February 2026 release cut its 2025 net farm income estimate by $25 billion versus its September 2025 forecast, confirming the speed of the deterioration. Early 2026 monthly data confirms the trajectory: Epiq AACER reported 62 Chapter 12 filings in April 2026 — a 130% increase over April 2025 and the highest monthly total since February 2020, up 82% from March 2026's 34 filings. Causes include corn and soybean prices reverting to roughly $4/bushel, sticky input costs, an interest-rate environment that doubled debt-service costs from 2021 levels, new tariffs on China and other major trading partners, severe weather in the Midwest and Southeast, and frozen or delayed USDA program payments.

Even at 315 filings, 2025 remains roughly half the 2019 peak and a small fraction of the 1980s farm crisis (when filings ran into the thousands). But the rate of acceleration, combined with rising debt loads (USDA forecasts farm-sector debt at a record $624.7 billion in 2026) and rising loan delinquencies (1.62% in Q1 2025, the highest since 2021), suggests the bottom of the cycle was 2023 and the trajectory is now upward.

This document compiles ten years of national totals, state-level distribution, regional shifts, financial-sector indicators, and the policy and market drivers behind each year. The accompanying CSV files (01_* through 05_*) are structured for direct ingestion into a database or website.

What "Farm Bankruptcy" Means

Most reporting on U.S. farm bankruptcies tracks Chapter 12 filings under the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Chapter 12 was created in 1986 in response to the 1980s farm crisis and made permanent in 2005. It is reserved for "family farmers" and "family fishermen" with regular annual income, and provides a court-supervised debt-reorganization process tailored to the seasonal cash flows of agriculture.

Eligibility is gated by a debt limit. The limit was raised from approximately $4.4 million to $10 million by the Family Farmer Relief Act of 2019, signed into law on August 23, 2019. The increase made larger operations newly eligible to file under Chapter 12 (rather than Chapter 11), so post-2019 numbers are not perfectly comparable to earlier years — some of the 2020 filings reflect operations that previously would have used Chapter 11.

Chapter 12 is the cleanest published indicator of farm financial distress, but it is a narrow lens. Many financially-stressed farms exit through other paths: voluntary sale, consolidation, foreclosure, Chapter 7 liquidation, Chapter 11 reorganization, or simply ceasing operations without a court filing. The 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture reported 141,733 fewer farms than in 2017 — a 7% decline over five years, vastly larger than the cumulative Chapter 12 filing volume over the same period. Bankruptcy is the visible tip of a much larger structural-change iceberg.

National Filings: Year-by-Year (2016–2025)

National Chapter 12 filings by calendar year (full data in 01_farm_bankruptcies_annual_national.csv):

Year	Filings	YoY % Change	Phase
2016	~461	—	Rising stress
2017	501	+8.7%	Rising stress
2018	498	-0.6%	Rising stress (trade war begins)
2019	595	+19.5%	Recent peak
2020	552	-7.2%	Pandemic / aid
2021	276	-50.0%	Relief
2022	169	-38.8%	Lowest since 2004
2023	139	-17.8%	Lowest since 2005
2024	216	+55.4%	Renewed stress
2025	315	+45.8%	Acceleration

Three observations stand out. First, the 2019 peak of ~595 filings is roughly six times smaller than the early-1987 peak of around 4,000 Chapter 12 filings during the 1980s farm crisis — a useful reminder that today's stress, while real, is not on that scale. Second, the 2022–2023 low of 139–169 filings is genuinely historic: Chapter 12 has been a permanent statute since 2005, and 2023 was the lowest in that 18-year window. Third, the 2024–2025 rebound is steep: a combined 127% increase over two years takes filings well above the multi-decade average of roughly 400 per year and suggests the cycle has decisively turned.

State-Level Distribution

The states leading Chapter 12 filings have shifted significantly across the decade, mirroring which commodity sectors are under the most pressure (full data in 02_farm_bankruptcies_by_state_2024_2025.csv).

In 2017–2020, Wisconsin dominated the national rankings, with 49 filings in 2018 and 57 in 2019 — both decade-highs for the state — as the dairy sector endured five consecutive years of poor milk prices. Wisconsin alone accounted for nearly 10% of national filings in 2019. Nebraska, Kansas, and Georgia were also consistently in the top tier through this period, reflecting cattle-price weakness in the Plains and weather and price stress on row crops in the Southeast.

In 2021–2023, no state filed at high levels. Wisconsin and Minnesota led 2021 with 27 and 26 filings respectively, but the absolute numbers fell sharply for everyone. By 2023, twelve states recorded zero filings (Alaska, Alabama, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming).

In 2024–2025, the rankings shifted decisively to the Southeast. Arkansas surged from a handful of filings in 2023 to 16 in 2024 and 33 in 2025 — the highest count for the state in the 21st century, driven by catastrophic losses in rice, cotton, and soybeans. Georgia rose 145% to 27 filings. Florida tripled to 16. Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Missouri also recorded triple-digit percentage increases, signaling that financial stress has spread back into the Corn Belt.

The 2025 state leaderboard:

State	2025 Filings	YoY %	Drivers
Arkansas	33	+106%	Rice ($259/ac loss), cotton ($353/ac loss)
Georgia	27	+145%	Cotton, peanuts, pecans
Iowa	18	+200%	Corn, soybean margins
Nebraska	17	+13%	Cattle, corn
Florida	16	+200%	Citrus disease, weather
Missouri	16	+167%	Soybeans, corn
Wisconsin	16	+700%	Dairy back under pressure
Minnesota	13	+300%	Corn, soybeans
Louisiana	12	-8%	Sugar cane, rice (only top-state decline)
Texas	12	+20%	Cotton, cattle
Kansas	11	+10%	Wheat, cattle

Regional Shifts

Reorganized by U.S. Courts circuit/region, the 2025 distribution is heavily concentrated in the Midwest and Southeast (full data in 03_farm_bankruptcies_by_region.csv):

• Midwest (13 states including WI, IA, MN, IL, KS, NE): 121 filings, 38.4% of national total, up roughly 70% from 2024.
• Southeast (10 states including AR, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA): 105 filings, 33.3% of total, up roughly 69% from 2024.
• West (CA, OR, WA, ID, MT, etc.): roughly 35 filings, 11.1%.
• Southwest (TX, OK, NM): roughly 25 filings, 7.9%.
• Northeast / Mid-Atlantic / Other: combined roughly 33 filings, 10.4%.

The fact that the Midwest and Southeast together account for over 70% of all filings is notable. These regions are dominated by row crops (corn, soybeans, cotton, rice) and dairy — the sectors most exposed to the 2024–2025 commodity-price decline and the Trump-administration trade actions. The West (largely fruit, vegetable, dairy, and tree nuts) and Northeast (dairy and specialty crops) have proven somewhat more insulated, though California's 17 filings in 2024 indicate that even those regions are not immune.

Financial-Sector Context

Chapter 12 filings are a downstream symptom. The upstream indicators (full data in 04_farm_sector_indicators.csv) tell a coherent story.

Net farm income swung dramatically across the decade. From depressed levels of $61–84 billion (nominal) in 2016–2019, income climbed to $113.6 billion in 2020, $140.7 billion in 2021, and a record $182.3 billion in 2022 as the Russia-Ukraine war pushed grain prices to multi-decade highs. It then fell back to $140.9 billion in 2024 before USDA's February 2026 estimate put 2025 at $157.5 billion — roughly $25 billion below USDA's earlier September 2025 forecast of $179.8 billion, reflecting the speed of the deterioration. The 2026 forecast of $153.4 billion would be a 0.7% nominal decrease, or 2.6% in real terms.

Total farm-sector debt has risen every single year of the past decade, from $376 billion in 2016 to a forecast $624.7 billion in 2026 — a 66% nominal increase in ten years. Real-estate debt is the larger component at roughly $404 billion in 2026, but the faster-growing component is non-real-estate debt (operating loans, equipment), forecast to reach $220.4 billion in 2026, up 6.0%. The growth in operating debt is particularly important: it indicates farmers are increasingly borrowing simply to cover input costs.

The debt-to-asset ratio has been remarkably stable — 12.7% in 2016 versus 13.5% in 2025 — because farmland values have appreciated alongside debt growth. USDA forecasts the ratio will rise to 13.75% in 2026 as debt outpaces asset growth, the first meaningful deterioration in the metric in years.

Agricultural loan delinquencies at commercial banks bottomed at 1.02% at year-end 2023 and have climbed since. By Q1 2025, past-due production loans reached 1.45%, and the broader industry ratio of delinquent agricultural production loans hit 1.62% — the highest level since Q1 2021. This is the single most timely warning sign and the indicator that most directly precedes a rise in Chapter 12 filings.

Liquidity and working capital are forecast to decline in 2026, and AFBF surveys show that the share of farmers reporting a "strong balance sheet" fell from 90% in April 2023 to 76% in January 2026.

Drivers and Causes

The causes of farm bankruptcy fall into five interacting categories (full timeline in 05_key_drivers_timeline.csv).

Commodity prices. Corn fell from a 2022 peak of approximately $7/bushel to roughly $4/bushel by late 2024, a 43% decline in real terms. Soybeans, wheat, and cotton followed similar paths. Milk prices were depressed for five consecutive years through 2019, devastating Wisconsin dairy. Rice prices in 2024–2025 produced losses of approximately $259 per acre for Arkansas growers; cotton losses ran to roughly $353 per acre. Commodity prices are the single largest driver of bankruptcy timing, but rarely the sole cause.

Input costs. Fertilizer, seed, fuel, machinery, and labor costs spiked in 2021–2022 and have been slow to come back down. Even as commodity prices have fallen, input costs remain elevated, compressing margins to negative territory for many row-crop operations. Interest is now a major operating expense in its own right; the Center for Commercial Agriculture reports that interest expense is the fastest-growing line item on the farm income statement.

Trade policy. The 2018–2019 U.S.–China trade war collapsed soybean exports and triggered the Market Facilitation Program ad-hoc aid. Trump-administration tariffs reimposed in 2025 on China, Mexico, and Canada — together with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural goods — have once again disrupted export markets, particularly for soybeans, corn, pork, and dairy. As of late 2025, the administration was reported to be considering a farm bailout package of up to $14 billion.

Interest rates and credit. The Federal Reserve's tightening cycle from 2022 onward roughly doubled farm operating-loan rates from 4–5% to 8–9%. This affects farmers more acutely than most businesses because operating loans must be renewed annually and machinery loans typically run 5–7 years. With debt at record levels, even modest rate increases significantly increase debt-service costs.

Policy timing. Federal aid has been an enormous offsetting factor. Roughly $46 billion in CFAP/MFP/PPP/direct ad-hoc payments flowed to producers in 2020 alone — far more than typical farm-bill outlays — and is the principal reason 2020 filings did not surge despite the pandemic. Conversely, in 2025, USDA program freezes and delayed Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) payments removed an expected source of liquidity at exactly the wrong moment, contributing to filings.

Weather. Severe drought, heat, and flooding in the Midwest and Southeast in spring/summer 2025 caused crop damage on top of the price stress. Weather is rarely the headline cause but routinely tips marginal operations into insolvency.

Demographic and Structural Context

Total U.S. farms fell from 2.06 million in 2016 to roughly 1.97 million in 2025, with the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture marking the steepest five-year decline in two decades — a loss of 141,733 farms, or 7%, from 2017 to 2022. Average farm size grew 5% to 463 acres. Total land in farms fell only 2.2%, so the consolidation pattern is clearly that smaller farms are exiting and their land is being absorbed by larger operations.

Within the Chapter 12 filer population, the typical operation has been a mid-size family farm with $1–10 million in assets, heavily leveraged, often in dairy or row crops, and frequently a multi-generational operation. The Family Farmer Relief Act's 2019 increase in the debt cap to $10 million has made larger operations newly eligible.

The bankruptcy rate per 10,000 farms — a more honest comparison than absolute numbers — peaked at approximately 2.9 per 10,000 in 2019 and bottomed near 0.7 in 2023. The 2025 rate is approximately 1.6 per 10,000, still well below the 2019 peak and an order of magnitude below the 1986–1987 farm crisis (roughly 23 per 10,000). On this normalized basis, the current cycle is real but far from a 1980s-style collapse.

What 2026 Looks Like So Far

The first hard 2026 data is now in, and it confirms the acceleration. Epiq AACER's May 6, 2026 release reported 62 Chapter 12 filings in April 2026 — a 130% jump over April 2025's 27 filings, and the highest monthly total since February 2020. That single month was up 82% from March 2026's 34 filings. April alone is already running at roughly the full-year quarterly pace that produced 315 filings in 2025 (full data in 06_2026_outlook_indicators.csv).

For comparison, Q1 2025 had recorded 88 Chapter 12 filings — up 96% from the 45 filings in Q1 2024. The trailing 12-month total from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025 was 259 filings. With April 2026 alone at 62 filings — more than double the prior April and on a rate-of-change consistent with the early-2025 acceleration — the early-2026 evidence is that the upward trajectory has not only continued but steepened.

The USDA February 2026 income release materially worsened the picture. USDA cut its 2025 net farm income estimate to $154.6 billion — roughly $25 billion below its September 2025 forecast of $179.8 billion. The 2026 forecast is $153.4 billion, a 2.6% real-terms decline from the (already-reduced) 2025 number. Direct government payments are forecast at a record $44.3 billion in 2026 — a $13.8 billion increase from 2025 — meaning that without ad-hoc and disaster aid, market income would be substantially lower.

Three structural indicators are flashing red.

Farm-sector debt is forecast to climb to a record $624.7 billion in 2026, a 5.2% increase. Non-real-estate debt (operating loans, equipment) is the faster-growing component at +6.0%, indicating that producers are borrowing increasingly large sums simply to fund inputs. Sector-wide interest expense is forecast at a record $33 billion in 2026, up from a long-term norm of roughly $20 billion.

Farm operating loan activity at commercial banks tracked by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City confirms the borrowing surge: Q4 2025 saw a roughly 40% year-over-year increase in operating loan volume, with the average new loan 30% larger and three months longer in maturity than in 2024. Larger, longer loans against lower expected income is the textbook profile of borrowers running out of working capital.

Sector-wide losses are now multi-year. The American Farm Bureau Federation's November 2025 study put accumulated farm losses at more than $50 billion across the previous three crop years, with 2025 losses estimated at more than $15 billion for corn, $6.7 billion for soybeans, and $5.8 billion for wheat. AFBF described the picture as "farm financial stress is severe and persistent... profits will remain elusive going into 2026."

Two factors offer modest counterweight. First, the Kansas City Fed reports that average interest rates on farm operating loans have decreased for five consecutive quarters — modest relief on the rate side, even if loan balances are growing. Second, the Trump administration's $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance package was finalized in December 2025, with USDA payments beginning February 28, 2026 at $44.36/acre for corn and $30.88/acre for soybeans; enrollment closed April 17, 2026. Limited Chinese soybean purchases reportedly resumed in Q4 2025. As of early May 2026, neither the aid disbursement nor the soybean purchases has produced a visible inflection — April 2026's filing surge happened during the bridge-payment rollout, suggesting the relief is too small or too late to offset the underlying stress.

Specialist legal forecasters are explicit: a January 2026 Adams & Reese / JD Supra analysis advises agricultural lenders to "prepare now for a continued wave of borrower distress and bankruptcy filings in 2026 and 2027." This is consistent with the pattern observed in past cycles — bankruptcy filings lag the deterioration in net farm income and credit quality by 12–24 months.

Outlook

Three forces point toward continued increases in 2026.

First, leading indicators are still deteriorating. Loan delinquencies were rising into early 2026 and are typically a 6–12 month leading indicator of Chapter 12 filings. Working capital is forecast to decline. Debt-to-asset ratios are forecast to worsen.

Second, the 2024–2025 stress was concentrated in row crops (corn, soybeans, cotton, rice). Many of those operations entered 2026 having already burned through reserves and operating credit. A second consecutive bad year would push more into bankruptcy.

Third, trade-policy uncertainty persists. Even if the proposed $14 billion bailout materializes, ad-hoc payments are not a substitute for export markets. The 2018–2019 experience showed that MFP payments offset about half of soybean farmers' tariff losses on average; the rest came out of working capital.

Two forces point the other way.

First, commodity prices may have bottomed. Corn at $4/bushel and soybeans at $9/bushel are at or below cost of production for most operations, which historically caps the downside. Any trade resolution or supply disruption (weather, geopolitical) would lift prices quickly.

Second, the farm-sector balance sheet is still strong on aggregate. Total assets are roughly $4 trillion against $625 billion in debt. The bankruptcy stress is concentrated in highly-leveraged mid-sized row-crop operations, not pervasive across the sector. Even AFBF describes the current environment as concerning but "not yet a crisis on the scale of the 1980s."

A reasonable 2026 base case is 400–475 Chapter 12 filings, roughly a 25–50% increase over 2025, returning toward but still below the 2019 peak of ~595. A bull case (trade resolution, full delivery of the announced aid package, weather cooperation) could keep filings in the 325–375 range. A bear case (continued tariff escalation, delayed aid disbursement, major weather event) could push filings to 500–550 — i.e., approaching but not exceeding the 2019 high. The April 2026 monthly print (62 filings, +130% YoY) is the first hard data on which scenario is materializing, and it tracks with the upper half of the base case or the lower edge of the bear case; the Q1 2026 official U.S. Courts release expected later in May 2026 will provide the corroborating quarterly view.

Methodology and Caveats

National annual filing counts are sourced from U.S. Courts statistical reports, summarized by the USDA Economic Research Service and the American Farm Bureau Federation Market Intel series. State-level breakdowns come from AFBF analyses of U.S. Courts data. Net farm income, debt, and asset figures are from USDA ERS Farm Income and Wealth Statistics. Agricultural loan delinquency rates are from the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Ag Finance Updates.

Several caveats apply. The 2016 filing total is approximate (~461) because pre-2017 calendar-year totals are reported less consistently than later years; the figure aligns with the ERS-reported trend that filings rose 46% from 2014 to 2019. State-level filings for some years (notably 2016, 2017, 2022, 2023) include best-available estimates where AFBF state-by-state breakdowns were not published; values marked with ~ in the CSVs are estimates. The 2019 peak is variously reported as 595 (AFBF) or 599 (some media); the discrepancy reflects different classification of fishery vs. farm filings. The Family Farmer Relief Act's August 2019 increase in the Chapter 12 debt cap means post-2019 totals are slightly inflated relative to earlier years because larger operations that previously filed under Chapter 11 now show up in Chapter 12 statistics. All dollar figures are nominal unless otherwise noted; real (inflation-adjusted) figures use USDA ERS's chained 2024-dollar series.

For the most current data, refresh from:

• U.S. Courts Bankruptcy Filings Statistics (quarterly updates)
• USDA ERS Farm Income and Wealth Statistics (released February, August, November)
• AFBF Market Intel (annual Chapter 12 analysis published February)
• Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Ag Finance Updates (quarterly)

Sources are listed in 99_sources.md.