The Department of Agriculture is reportedly lowering its farm earnings forecast for 2025 as declines in the crop sector more than offset rising income for cattle producers.
Clint Dunn, a row crop farmer in Leflore County, Mississippi, recently told his local Delta Council (video below) that two different farmers have told him in passing that "they have basically lost all of their working capital."
"Some of them are down to, 'If I just walk away, I'll have zero,'" Dunn told the economic development organization that represents the 19 Delta and part-Delta counties of Northwest Mississippi.
"But what's a 50-year-old guy with no specific work experience … supposed to do?" he added.
Agricultural economist Steve Martin of the Mississippi State Extension Service says the situation is the worst it has been in at least 25 years.
"What's happened for row crops is we've had three years – 2023, 2024, and 2025 – when we've had decent yields, but the market prices have been going down, and costs are going up," he relays. "Coming out of that pandemic period … the cost really went up, and that's for everything we buy in the row crop world."
That includes machinery, seeds, and chemicals.
Row crop farming also takes hits from weather and crop management decisions.
"It's just this building of not covering your cost," Martin summarizes. "It's where we are today. It's eaten through equity; it's eaten through capital. It takes a long time to build equity and land, and if you didn't have the equity, some of those people are going out."
Agri-Pulse reports that even with the lower numbers, both the estimates for net farm income and net cash income this year are above the 20-year average, largely due to an influx of government payments to row crop producers.
Martin says new international markets for exports are needed to help farmers long term with this supply and demand issue.
