The US Farmers' Costing Get Higher and Higher

The USDA statistics showed that it's costing more and more to be a US farmer, 2017 agriculture shade net expenses were estimated at $359.8 billion, up from $346.9 billion in 2016.

The 2017 total farm production expenditures are up 3.7% compared with 2016 total farm production expenditures. For the 17 line items, 13 showed an increase from previous year, while the rest showed a decrease, according to the NASS report.

TOP 4 EXPENSES

The four largest expenditures for farmers totaled $176.2 billion and account for 49.0% of total expenditures in 2017, the NASS report summary stated. These include feed at 15.3%, farm services at 12.2%, livestock, poultry, and related anti insect net expenses equaled 11.7%, and labor made up 9.8% of expenditures.  The United States total farm expenditure average per farm is $176,352, up 4.3% from $169,035 in 2016, according to today’s NASS report.

FUEL EXPENSES

U.S. farmers spent $12.0 billion on fuel, according to NASS’s report on annual expenses. Diesel, the largest sub component cost totaled $7.6 billion, accounting for 63.3%. Diesel expenditures are up 2.7% from the previous year.

The U.S. economic sales class contributing most to the 2017 U.S. total expenditures is the $1,000,000 - $4,999,999 class, with expenses of $114.9 billion, 31.9% of the U.S. total, up 1.7% from the 2016 level of $113.0 billion, according to the NASS study. In 2017, crop farms anti bird net expenses jumped up to $183.9 billion, up 3.9%, while livestock farms expenditures also increased to $175.9 billion, up 3.5%.