After weeks of heavy rainfall and flooding, 15 percent of Ohio farmland has gone unplanted. In states like Kansas, Minnesota and Nebraska this usually triggers an uptick in farms filing for bankruptcy. But a report from researchers at The Ohio State University shows Ohio farms have not followed this trend.
The report’s co-author, Robert Dinterman said crop insurance plays a big role, but there’s more to it than that.
"Having one particular year of inability to plant isn’t usually going to trigger you to then file for a chapter 12 bankruptcy. It’s usually got to be a sustained long period of time of declining income and/or land values that really kind of triggers it."
Land values in Kansas and Nebraska have fallen steadily since 2015. Northeast Ohio saw the largest drop in farm land values across the state, but only by 3.3 percent.
