Financial Characteristics of North Dakota Farms 2001-2010

The performance of over 500 North Dakota farms, 2001-2010, 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, 2005-2009, are also presented. In 2010, median and average acreage per farm was 2,010 and 2,579, respectively. Median and average cash farm revenue was $469,023 and $631,920, respectively. Over 70% of farms were crop farms and 47 percent of farms had gross sales exceeding $500,000. Median age of farm operators was 47. Median net farm income in 2010 was $174,010, up sharply from $47,547 in 2009. Financial measures for 2010, 2008 and 2007 were much superior to those in other years for the 2001-2010 period. The Red River Valley and crop farms typically had stronger profitability, solvency, and repayment capacity from 2001 to 2010 than other regions and farm types, respectively. Exceptions were 2007 and 2009 when the north central region had the best regional performance and 2005 when the south central region and livestock farms had better performance. The 2010 median net farm income was $239,426 for crop farms and $48,775 for livestock farms. Farms with sales less than $500,000 were over 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 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 highest of the decade in 2010, 33.1 percent, and the lowest in 2009, 13.4 percent. It was 24 percent in 2008 and 30.6 percent in 2007 after ranging from 22.4 to 14 percent between 2001 and 2006