Financial Characteristics of North Dakota Farms 2003-2012

The performance of over 500 North Dakota farms, 2003-2012, 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, 2007-2011, are also presented. In 2012, median and average acreage per farm was 1,932 and 2,550, respectively. Median and average cash farm revenue was $585,143 and $799,464, respectively. Over 70% of farms were crop farms and 58 percent of farms had gross sales exceeding $500,000. Median age of farm operators was 47. Median net farm income in 2012 was $238,054, the highest in the past 10 years, up from $144,414 in 2010. Financial measures for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008 and 2007 were much superior to those in other years for the 2003-2012 period. The Red River Valley and crop farms typically had stronger profitability, solvency, and repayment capacity from 2003 to 2012 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 2012 median net farm income was $328,695 for crop farms and $40,397 for livestock farms. Farms with sales less than $500,000 were over four times 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 highest of the decade in 2012, 36.8, percent, and the lowest in 2009, 13.4 percent. Except for 2009, it was greater than 24 percent from 2007 to 2012 after ranging from 22.4 to 14 percent between 2002 and 200