Farmers and ranchers slashed their production expenditures by nearly 9 percent last year, driven by the end of a seven-year agricultural boom and a collapse in farm income, said USDA. After falling by 54 percent since 2013, U.S. net farm income is forecast to stabilize this year with a small decline; cash expenses also are expected to contract slightly.
In its annual Farm Production Expenditures report, USDA estimated outlays of $362.8 billion in 2015, the lowest figure since $360.1 billion in 2012. The peak year for expenditures was 2014 at $397.6 billion in 2014, when commodity prices began a multi-year decline.
Average spending per farm was $176,181 in 2015, down by $15,319 from the previous year. The largest operators, producers with more than $5 million in sales per year, spent an average $9.3 billion, a 15 percent drop from 2014. The Midwest had the largest expenditures, $113.1 million, or 31 percent of the U.S. total. For crop farms, the largest expense was rent, $25.4 billion, or 14 percent of expenditures, while the leading expenditure for livestock producers was feed, costing $57.1 billion or 31 percent of total outlays.