USDA Chief Economist worried about financial health of farm sector

February 09, 2022 11:14 AM

USDA’s Chief Economist says that he is worried about the direction of the financial health of the farm sector.

The new USDA income forecast for 2022 shows assets increasing by more than 1 percent, debt increasing by almost 3 percent, and equity increasing by 1 percent.

Seth Meyer explains why this is troublesome: “So, what we’ve got is you got debt increasing faster than assets are or equity, giving us debt to equity and debt to asset ratio as high as they’ve been since about 2002.”

These numbers have been trending up for the last decade, but Meyer said that he would like to see that turnaround.

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