Federal court data showed that U.S. farm bankruptcy rates jumped 20 percent in 2019 — to an eight-year high — as financial woes in the U.S. agricultural economy continued in spite of massive federal bail-out funding, Reuters reported. According to data released this week by the Administrative Office for the U.S. Courts, family farmers filed 595 chapter 12 bankruptcies in 2019, up from 498 filings a year earlier. The data also shows that such filings — known as “family farmer” bankruptcies — have steadily increased every year for the past five years. Farmers across the nation also have retired or sold their farms because of the financial strains, changing the face of Midwestern towns and concentrating the business in fewer hands. The increase in cases had been somewhat expected, bankruptcy experts and agricultural economists said, as farmers face trade battles, ever-mounting farm debt, prolonged low commodity prices, volatile weather patterns and a fatal pig disease that has decimated China’s herd. Even billions of dollars spent over the past two years in government agricultural assistance has not stemmed the bleeding.
