Financial Characteristics of North Dakota Farms 2007-2016

The performance of over 500 North Dakota farms, 2007-2016, is summarized using 16 financial measures. Farms are categorized by geographic region, farm type, farm size, gross cash sales, farm tenure, net farm income, debt-to-asset, and age of farmer to analyze relationships between financial performance and farm characteristics. Five-year averages, 2011-2015, are also presented. In 2016, median and average acreage per farm was 1,779 and 2,365, respectively. Median and average cash farm revenue was $535,952 and $704,566, respectively. About 75% of farms were crop farms and median age of farm operators was 48. Median net farm income in 2016 increased to $82,178 from $18,982 in 2015, which was the lowest since 1997. The 10-year high was $238,054 in 2012. Financial measures for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008 and 2007 were much superior to those in other years for the 2007-2016 period. The Red River Valley and crop farms typically had stronger profitability, solvency, and repayment capacity than other regions and farm types, respectively, but not in 2013 and 2014. Median net farm income of livestock farms decreased to $2,864 in 2016 from a ten year high of $95,130 in 2014. Farms with sales less than $500,000 were nearly twice as likely to have debt-to-asset higher than 70 percent as farms with sales greater than $500,000. Farms that own some crop land, but less than 40 percent of the land they operate were more likely to be crop farms, farm more acreage, have larger sales, and be more profitable. As expected, solvency and percent of crop land owned increased with farmer age. Median net farm income as a percent of gross revenue was the lowest in the decade in 2015, at 5.1%, and the highest in 2012, at 36.8%.