ICYMI: With falling profits, Iowa farmers facing ‘extreme financial distress,’ more bankruptcies
DES MOINES – Iowa recorded the second-most farm bankruptcies in the nation during the first six months of 2025 and is already doubling last year’s total, according to the Des Moines Register.
Joseph Peiffer, a bankruptcy attorney in Cedar Rapids who’s worked with farmers since the crisis in the 1980s, said he’s seen “extreme financial distress” across Iowa at a “level higher than I’ve seen in a long time.”
This is due in a large part to three years’ worth of falling profits.
Max Deardeuff, an agriculture mediation specialist, said that he’s “fearful about what’s coming down the pike, with a lot of loans that come due” later in the year, and that he doesn’t know if “everyone is going to get their loans” paid.
Current data only validate their fears:
- Iowa data through October show 18 farm bankruptcy filings. That’s the largest number since 2020.
- Nationally, 181 farmers have filed for bankruptcy protection in the first two quarters of 2025, nearly 60% more than this time last year, according to U.S. Bankruptcy Court filings.
- Iowa farmers can expect a 24% decline in farm income in 2026, a new report shows.
- The Chicago Federal Reserve said credit conditions in Iowa and the district’s four states are softening, based on a second-quarter snapshot that’s taken annually. The share of farm loans with “major” or “severe” repayment problems, at 2.9%, up 2.2% from a year earlier, is the highest since 2020, the Fed said.
- Iowa farmers filed the second-largest number of bankruptcies nationally in the first half of the year, twice as many as last year and the most since 2021.
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