Negative Margins Persist Into 2026
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Negative Margins Persist Into 2026
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About this listen
What Mid-West Farm Report heard from the 2026 Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum this week is that farmers are looking at the third straight year of negative margins for staple crops like corn and soybeans. Government aid is coming down the pipeline, but economists are critical that it is solely a temporary fix.
Paul Mitchell, Director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at UW-Madison, says the financial pressure has some farm families reaching a breaking point. What are the indicators? Farm bankruptcies are on the rise.
According to federal court data, Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings reached 293 nationally by Sep. 30, 2025, already surging past the 213 filings recorded for the entirety of 2024. Wisconsin alone saw filings jump from two at the end of 2024 to 13 by the fall of 2025, Mitchell says.
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