There were fewer farms in 2017 and they were bigger than in 2016. But we lost another million acres of farmland last year too.
The annual Farms and Land in Farms report was released by the USDA on Feb. 16. The report showed the continuing trend of farmland loss and farm consolidation that has been seen since the report was conducted.
For the purposes of the report, a “farm” is any entity which sells $1,000 or more of agricultural products. This has been the definition of a “farm” since 1974, though there have been a few alterations in recordkeeping.
The report noted that there are also things called “point farms,” which are entities that did not sell $1,000 or more worth of agricultural products but produced sufficient agricultural products that would have sold for $1,000 or more if they had sold. This class of entities do not appear to be reflected in the report’s total farm counts, but the report noted that they made up 20.3 percent of “farms” surveyed in the 2012 Census of Agriculture.
Fewer, bigger farms
There were 2.05 million farms in 2017, down about 12,000 from 2016. The average size of farms in acres rose to 444 acres in 2017, up from 442 acres in 2016.
The interplay between the number of farms and average farm size can be seen in Figure 1.
The most noticeable losses in numbers of farms came from Texas, Illinois, and Nebraska, which lost an estimated 1,500, 1,200, and 1,000 farms respectively. All three of those states saw increases in their average farm size however, suggesting consolidation was occurring. Nebraska’s farms in particular saw a large jump in average size, from 934 acres in 2016 to 954 acres in 2017
Only two classes of farms—those in the $100,000-249,999 and the $1 million or more sales classes—saw increased numbers, while all others declined. The smallest sales class of farms, the $1,000-9,999 class, saw the biggest decline in terms of raw numbers, losing about 9,000 farms. Even with this large decline, those smallest farms still represent half of all farms in the country at 49.9 percent. In 2016, they represented 50.1 percent of total farms.
While the smallest class of farms were the most numerous, they also utilized the least volume of farmland, both on average and as a percentage of total farmland utilized. This can be seen in Figure 2. Even though the smallest farms represented half of total U.S. farms, they utilized 9.5 percent of total farmland.
By comparison, the largest sales class of farms, those selling $1 million or more, represented only 4 percent of total U.S. farms and utilized a quarter of the total farmland.
The two largest sales classes of farms—those in the $500,000-999,999 and the $1 million or more sales classes—saw gains in overall acres of 1.34 million acres. Most of those acre increases went to the $1 million or more sales class. All other farm sales classes lost acres.
Lost farmland
The U.S. has about 2.26 billion acres of land in total, not including territories and protectorates or land covered by permanent water bodies. Of that, 40 percent, or 910 million acres, was farmland in 2017. This was down 1 million acres from 2016 and continued the general trend of declining farmland. Since 2013, the U.S. has lost about 1 million acres of farmland a year. Most USDA sources cite conversion for development as the leading cause of farmland loss.
Collectively, these losses came from Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming in 2017. Total losses of farmland in these states came to about 1.45 million acres.
A few states saw farmland increase in their borders; Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Montana, Nevada and New Mexico. Their collective gains amounted to about 450,000 acres.
Four states—Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Wisconsin—saw overall declines in their farming, meaning their number of farms, land in farms, and average farm size all went down. No state saw the opposite situation, though New Mexico came closest by adding about 100 farms and 100,000 acres of farmland. The average size of a New Mexican farm fell slightly from 1,756 acres in 2016 to 1,753 acres in 2017. — WLJ
