Nebraska’s agricultural sector is poised for a prosperous year, even amid challenges like tariff issues and depressed grain prices.
The state’s net farm income is forecasted to climb to $8.42 billion in 2025, a substantial increase from the previous year’s $5.94 billion, as detailed in the Fall 2025 Farm Income Outlook released by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in collaboration with the University of Missouri.
This increase is largely attributed to higher livestock revenues and government aid, which have compensated for the reduction in crop revenues and rising production costs.
Jay Parsons, director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Agricultural Profitability, noted that the financial gains are not universally experienced across all sectors.
“If you’re a crop producer, you don’t have cattle, that’s certainly not exactly what you’re experiencing,” Parsons explained. “You’re experiencing low prices and tight margins.”
Parsons highlighted that while new trade agreements have mitigated earlier setbacks due to limited international markets, prices have not fully recovered.
“Tariffs have affected some export activity,” Parsons stated. “Everybody’s heard about China not buying soybeans, but now they’ve agreed to buy some, so that’s getting priced back into the marketplace.”
Although the recent government shutdown has delayed some disaster relief payments to farmers, the projection expects these payments will resume once the government reopens.
Looking ahead to 2026, a slight dip in overall income is anticipated, primarily due to a decrease in government payments, which are notoriously difficult to predict.
“Most of the government payments are tied to conditions not being at least average,” Parsons explained. “If you look at any project, anybody making projections on farm income out into the future, they don’t ever assume that a government payment is going to come through, because that would essentially assume that the average isn’t going to happen.”
Rising production expenses and crop insurance indemnities are expected to impact net farm income negatively. Nonetheless, both crop and livestock revenues are projected to increase in 2026, resulting in a slight decrease in net farm income to $8.37 billion.
