Agricultural bankruptcy can take several forms, and understanding filing trends requires looking beyond a single type. This project compiles agricultural bankruptcy filings under both Chapter 11 and Chapter 12, providing a more complete picture of financial distress and restructuring in the agricultural sector.
Chapter 12 is specifically designed for family farmers and family fishermen with regular annual income. It provides eligible agricultural operations with a structured process for reorganizing debt while continuing to operate the farm or ranch. Chapter 12 includes provisions tailored to the unique financial circumstances of agricultural operations, including flexible repayment options and treatment of certain types of farm debt.
Chapter 11, by contrast, is a broader business reorganization chapter available to a much wider range of businesses and individuals. Agricultural businesses that do not qualify for Chapter 12, or that may be better suited to Chapter 11 because of their size, organizational structure, or financial circumstances, may file under Chapter 11.
The following charts reflect Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings, by location. Each mark is a filing location, sized by the number of Chapter 11 or Chapter 12 case IDs there and colored by chapter. PACER is a live docket system and cases can move between chapters after filing; these counts are a snapshot pulled as of June 2026 and reflect each case’s chapter as docketed at that time.
By compiling agricultural bankruptcy filings across both chapters, this project provides a more comprehensive view of trends across the agricultural sector. The data can help identify changes over time, geographic patterns, and emerging financial challenges affecting agricultural operations. When considered more broadly, these filings offer valuable information for farmers, attorneys, policymakers, researchers, lenders, and others seeking to understand the economic conditions affecting agriculture.
Frequently Asked Questions:
What does this project track?
This project compiles agricultural bankruptcy filings under Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 using bankruptcy dockets from PACER, the U.S. Courts’ electronic records system. The cases are geocoded to ZIP-code centroids to illustrate the geographic distribution of agricultural bankruptcy filings.
The project is intended to provide a more complete picture of agricultural financial stress by considering both Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 filings.
Why include both Chapter 11 and Chapter 12?
Chapter 12 is specifically designed for family farmers and family fishermen and includes provisions tailored to agricultural operations. Chapter 11 is a broader business reorganization chapter that may be used by agricultural businesses that do not qualify for Chapter 12 or whose circumstances make Chapter 11 more appropriate.
Considering both chapters is important because Chapter 12 filings do not capture all agricultural bankruptcy activity. An agricultural operation may file under Chapter 11 because of its business structure, debt levels, eligibility, or other circumstances. Looking at both chapters therefore provides a broader view of financial stress in agriculture.
Who conducted this project?
This project was conducted by the National Agricultural Law Center (NALC) in partnership with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA). Its goal is to provide useful information about financial trends affecting agriculture to farmers, agricultural organizations, policymakers, attorneys, researchers, and others.
How is a “case” counted?
For both Chapter 11 and Chapter 12, the project counts distinct cases, defined by a unique court and case number.
For Chapter 12, joint spouses and multiple related debtors appearing on the same docket are counted as one case. That case is placed at the address of the lead debtor.
Chapter 11 is counted the same way: one distinct case number equals one case and one U.S. Courts case link. However, related entities in Chapter 11 can file separately. As a result, a single agricultural operation may have several Chapter 11 case numbers.
How are Chapter 11 agricultural cases identified?
The Chapter 11 dataset is limited to debtors matched to historical Farm Service Agency (FSA) payment records by both address and name. This includes direct name matches and high-confidence partial name matches to FSA records.
These address-and-name matches provide the highest-confidence identification that a bankruptcy debtor is associated with an agricultural operation.
Does Chapter 12 include only cases that match FSA records?
No. Chapter 12 includes all identified cases, including both cases that could be matched to historical FSA payment records and cases that could not be matched to FSA payments.
This differs from Chapter 11, which is limited to debtors meeting the specified address-and-name FSA matching criteria.
Does one case represent one farm or agricultural operation?
Not necessarily. A bankruptcy case is not the same thing as an agricultural operation.
One farm family or agricultural operation may have several separate bankruptcy cases. For example, an operating LLC and a separate land-holding LLC may each file their own bankruptcy case and therefore appear as multiple cases at the same location.
This distinction is particularly important when interpreting locations with multiple filings. The largest marks on the map each contain ten cases. These represent related entities associated with one operation, with the cases filed either together on a single day or over a period of weeks or months:
- Delano, California — related cases filed together on a single day.
- Underwood, Iowa — related cases filed over weeks to months.
- Monticello, Arkansas — related cases filed over weeks to months.
These examples illustrate why the number of bankruptcy cases should not be interpreted as a one-to-one count of farms or agricultural operations experiencing financial distress.
How are cases displayed on the map?
Cases are geocoded to the centroid of the associated ZIP code, rather than to an exact street address. As a result, several filings within the same ZIP code- and potentially several filings in the same town- may stack at a single point on the map.
Users can click on a mark to see the list of cases represented at that location, including links to the corresponding PACER dockets.
Does each mark represent one case?
No. A mark represents the ZIP-code location of one or more cases. Multiple cases may appear at the same point when they share a ZIP code.
This means that the visual size or concentration of bankruptcy activity at a location should be interpreted together with the underlying case list rather than simply as a count of individual farms.
Is the chapter designation based on the chapter under which the case was originally filed?
No. The chapter shown in this project is the chapter under which the case was docketed in PACER as of June 2026.
A bankruptcy case can convert into or out of a chapter after it is initially filed. For example, a case originally filed under Chapter 11 could subsequently convert to Chapter 12, or vice versa. The project classifies each case according to the chapter reflected in PACER at the time of the June 2026 data pull, rather than the chapter under which it was originally filed.
In contrast, the bankruptcy data posted yearly by the United States Courts reflects the chapter as of the date of the original filing. As a result, there are minor differences in the numbers of Chapter 12 filings between the two data sets.
How should these data be interpreted?
The data should be read with care. The project counts distinct bankruptcy cases, not distinct agricultural operations. In particular, related entities associated with one operation may have separate case numbers, causing a single operation to appear as multiple cases.
The data is best used to identify patterns and trends in agricultural bankruptcy filings, including geographic patterns and changes in filing activity over time, rather than as a precise count of the number of farms experiencing financial distress.
What are the sources for the project?
The primary source is PACER, the online docket for the US Court system, which provides the bankruptcy dockets used to identify and classify cases.
USDA Farm Service Agency records are used for entity identification and matching purposes only. They are not the source of the bankruptcy filings themselves.
For geographic display, the project uses GeoNames ZIP-code centroids. Because locations are based on ZIP centroids, map marks indicate the general geographic location associated with a filing and should not be interpreted as the debtor’s precise physical address.
Can I obtain the underlying data set?
Yes. Researchers and others interested in using the underlying agricultural bankruptcy data may contact the National Agricultural Law Center to request additional information about the data set, including the case-level information underlying the map.