Interesting Trends in 2007 Ag Census

This afternoon, the United States Department of Agriculture released the 2007 Agricultural Census. Published every five years, the Census gives a national, as well as state-by-state and county, view of current levels of agricultural production, land use and sales in America.

This year’s Census has some very interesting facts and trends

• U.S. agriculture saw a net increase of about 75,000 farms from 2002 – 2007. The majority of these new farms are smaller in size, operated by younger individuals and are generally not the only income source for the farmers.
• However, because these new farms are smaller in size, the U.S. actually lost 16.2 million acres of farmland from 2002 – 2007. A very disturbing fact. (pdf)
• Unfortunately, although not unexpected, the concentration of agriculture increased in the U.S. between 2002 – 2007.

In 2002, 144,000 farms produced 75 percent of the value of U.S. agricultural production. In 2007, the number of farms that produced that same share of production declined to 125,000.

Another way of looking at concentration is the share of agricultural production produced by farms with more than $1 million in sales. In 2007, farms in this sales class produced 59 percent of U.S. agricultural production, while in 2002 farms in this sales class produced 47 percent of all production.

What exactly does this mean? Well, it means that there are a smaller number of wealthy farming operations supporting the same percentage of agricultural production now than in 2002. This also means that smaller farmers (those with revenue under $1 million) are receiving less of a market share in U.S. agriculture than they did five years ago.
The Farm Numbers fact sheet can be found here. (pdf)
• A positive trend can be found in the percentage increase of direct to consumer and organic sales in the U.S. According to tables 2 and 48, there was a 17% increase in the number of direct to consumer sales and a 335% increase in organic sales in the country between 2002 – 2007. Although large-scale organic producers probably have a great deal to do with this increase in sales, I think it still shows the power of consumer choice.
• The diversity of those operating farms has increased, and most significantly there was a 30% increase in the number of woman who are the primary operators of farms in the country. I’d say this is certainly a positive trend.
• Once again, the average age of farmers rose from 55.3 in 2002 to 57.1 in 2007. This further signals the need for more intensive farmer transition programs, like this one, that help lay the groundwork for the next generation of producers. The Demographics fact sheet can be found here. (pdf)
• Fresno County in California is the largest agricultural producing county in the nation with sales of $3.7 billion, or 1.2 percent of the total U.S. value.
• The U.S. government made $8 billion worth of payments to farmers in 2007. You may notice that $1.8 billion of this amount was given to participants in the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program. In theory, this program is a good thing. However, as food prices have risen over the past year, many farmers are choosing to take this land out of the program and are putting it back into production in order to squeeze every penny they can out of their land.

Many other interesting facts and trends can be found in the full version of the Ag Census, although at 739 pages, it may take you a while to dig through everything.

The full report can be found here.

(Photo credit: carlsonimkeller on Flickr)