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USDA report confirms farm-size shift

More than half of U.S. farm production comes from less than five-percent of U.S. farms.

A new USDA report says most farm production has shifted over the past 25 years to million-dollar-farms. Lead author Robert Hoppe, from the Economic Research Service, tells Brownfield these farms – which have at least one million dollars in gross cash farm income – contributed to more than half of all farm production in 2015.

“Four-point-two percent of the farms had 53 percent of production in 2015,” says Hoppe.

Hoppe says this is up from one-third of all U.S. farm production in 1991. Still, the majority of farms in the U.S. are small family farms.

“The small farms typically in recent years have accounted for about 90 percent of the total farms and their earning share of production is like in the low 20 percent,” says Hoppe.

Hoppe says small family farms have less than $350,000 in annual gross cash farm income, and cover almost half of all U.S. farmland.

Click here to read the USDA Report

Audio: Robert Hoppe, Economist, USDA Economic Research Service