Net U.S. farm income will drop 38% this year to $55.9 billion, the lowest level in more than a decade, reflecting depressed crop prices and softening dairy and hog markets, federal forecasters said Tuesday.

The Agriculture Department said net farm income will decline to the lowest since 2002 on a nominal and inflation-adjusted basis. Last year, U.S. farm income totaled $90.4 billion, and in 2013 it reached a record $123 billion.

The USDA lowered its farm-income forecast from August, when it projected a year-over-year decline of 36%. The projected drop would mark the second consecutive decrease since 2013, driven in part by large corn and soybean crops this autumn and a projected 8.7% decline in crop receipts.

Lower prices for milk, hogs, broiler chickens and cattle also have pressured farm incomes, the USDA said.

The futures price for corn, the nation's largest crop by value, has fallen nearly 8% this year as largely benign weather benefited growers during the summer. Prices for the grain have plunged more than 50% since a severe drought in 2012 sent them to an all-time high of more than $8 a bushel. Prices for soybeans have dropped 15% this year and are down by more than half since 2012.

Earlier this month, the USDA estimated that the nation's soybean harvest will be a record 3.98 billion bushels. The government also forecast the nation's third-largest corn crop in history, totaling 13.65 billion bushels.

Write to Jesse Newman at jesse.newman@wsj.com

 

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 24, 2015 13:45 ET (18:45 GMT)

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