The 2022 Ag Census, created by the USDA, collected 6M data points on producers, production, economics, and almost every aspect of agriculture you can imagine, and can give a helpful idea of what’s happening with the nation’s farmland, how policy is impacting the ag sector, and potential problems on the horizon.
Key Points
The total number of farms declined between 2017 and 2022, from 2.04 million to 1.90 million.
Almost 3/4 of farmland was used for two commodity categories: oilseed and grain production (32%) and beef cattle production (40%).
The largest farms (sales of $5 million or more) accounted for fewer than 1% of all farms but 42% of all sales. Farms with sales of $50,000 or less accounted for 74% of farms and 2% of sales.
The top nine U.S. counties are in California, and the top county, Fresno, had larger agriculture sales than 23 individual states.
At the farm level, average income in 2022 was $79,790, up 85% or almost double from 2017.
In 2022, U.S. farms and ranches produced $543.1 billion in agricultural products, up from $388.5 billion in 2017.
"This survey is essentially asking the critical question of whether as a country are we okay with losing that many farms? Are we okay with losing that much farmland or is there a better way? That’s the importance of this survey." — Tom Vilsack
