The average age of farmers in the U.S. is continuing to increase while the number of farms declines, according to new numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Census of Agriculture.
“This survey, in addition to all the amazing work and data that it contains, is a wake up call,” said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack at an event for the census release on Tuesday.
The average American farmer is now 58.1 years old, which is an increase of about half a year compared to the last census conducted in 2017. Farmers who are 65 and older increased by 12% in this census, while farmers aged 35-64 decreased by 9%. The department found farmers are generally younger in Midwest states and older in Southern states.
At the same time, farms are growing bigger on average and declining in number. That’s a sign of consolidation, said Brad Summa, director of the Heartland Regional Field Office of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service.
“We're just becoming more efficient,” Summa said. “But that efficiency kind of comes at a cost. To be a really big, large, producing farm, there's a lot of overhead. And it's tough to break into that if you are a new and beginning farmer.”
That consolidation is especially apparent when you look at changes in different sizes of farms, Summa said. Between the 2017 census and the 2022 census, every size of farm saw a decline in total numbers, except for the largest size — farms with 5,000 acres or more.
In the new census, the total number of farms decreased 6.9%, to 1.9 million. Farms now cover 880 million acres, which is a 20 million acre decline in five years. Vilsack said that is like losing all of the Northeastern states except Connecticut.
“I sincerely hope that we take this information very seriously, and that we understand that it need not be that every five years we report fewer farms and less farmland,” Vilsack said. “It doesn't have to be.”
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