Farm Expenses Continue To Rise

With continued uncertainty in agricultural production prices, we see that expenses going into production continue to rise. The USDA recently released the Farm Production Expenditures report, demonstrating what it takes to operate a farm and what all of this money is spent on. The report took the data from 2020 to compare against the year before.

Wisconsin farm production expenditures totaled $10.8 billion in 2020, according to the USDA, National Agricultural Statistics Service – Farm Production Expenditures 2020 Summary report. This was an increase of 3% from the 2019 total expenditures. Feed expense, which increased 6% to $2.28 billion, represented the largest single production expense in Wisconsin in 2020, accounting for 21% of the total. Farm Services was the second largest expense category, totaling $1.48 billion and accounting for nearly 14% of the total. This was up 1% from 2019. The largest percentage decreases were Fuels (down 16%), Livestock, Poultry and Related Expenses (down 15%), and Labor (down 14%). The largest percentage increases from last year were for Other farm machinery (up 36%), Tractors and self-propelled farm machinery (up 35%), Miscellaneous capital expenses (up 25%), and Trucks and autos (up 15%).