U.S. farm numbers held steady in 2010

The total number of farms in the United States in 2010 is estimated to be 2.2 million, about the same as in 2009. Total land in farms increased 100,000 acres to 920 million acres. The average farm is 418 acres.

The National Ag Statistics Service divides the farms into four categories according to annual sales with breaks at $10,000, $100,000, $250,00 and $500,000. There was a slight increase in the number of farms in the under $10,000 and over $500,000 categories. There are 126,720 farms occupying 298.9 million acres in the over $500,000 category.

There were 935,000 farms with cattle in 2010, a decrease of 1 percent from 2009. 742,000 beef cow operations, also down 1 percent. About one-third of the nation’s beef cattle are in operations with 100 to 499 head.

There were 62,500 dairy farms in the United States last year, a decline of 4 percent. 20,000 of the nation’s dairy farms had 29 or fewer cows representing 1.1 percent of total milk production. On the other end of the spectrum, there were 760 farms with more than 2,000 cows in the country and they produced 32.5 percent of the nation’s milk.

There were 69,100 hog farms in the country down 3 percent from 2009. 86 percent of the nation’s hogs are in operations with 2,000 or more hogs, 61 percent are in 5,000-plus operations.

The U.S. had 81,000 farms with sheep and 152,000 with goats.

Read the NASS report here: