Family farms dominate ag landscape

WASHINGTON – Family farms account for 96% of total U.S. farms and 83% of the total value of production, according to the Agricultural Resource Management Survey.

The survey, released Dec. 10, is conducted annually by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service and Economic Research Service.

Statistics are for 2023 based on information collected through 2024. Farms are divided by farm size: Small family farms are defined as having a gross cash farm income less than $350,000, GCFI for midsize farms is between $350,000 and $999,999, and large-scale farms’ GCFI is $1 million or more.

Here’s what the survey found:

• About 86% were small family farms, operated 41% of U.S. agricultural lands and account for 17% of the total value of production. The number of small family farms fell by 1% from the previous year.

• Large-scale family farms accounted for 48% of the total value of production and 31% of agricultural land in 2023. Midsize family farms accounted for 18% of agricultural land and 18% of the total value of production.

• Nonfamily farms accounted for the remaining 4% of farms. Among nonfamily farms, 16% had a GCFI of $1 million or more. Nonfamily farms vary widely in size, income and ownership structure and include partnerships of unrelated individuals, nonfamily corporations and farms with a hired manager unrelated to the owners.

• Nonfamily farms’ share of value of production increased from 11% of the total value of production in 2022 to 17% in 2023. Production was concentrated in large-scale nonfamily farms, which accounted for 16% of nonfamily farms and 93% of all nonfamily farms’ production.

• The share of farms with a low-risk operating profit margin of at least 25% varied by farm size in 2023, with midsize and large-scale family farms being most likely to have low-risk OPM. Less than 30% of small family farms of each type operated in the low-risk zone compared with 42% of large-scale family farms. Between 52% and 85% of small family farms had an OPM in the high-risk zone – OPM less than 10% – depending on the farm type, compared with 34% of large and 29% of very large family farms, respectively.

• Conservation Reserve Program payments continued to be more concentrated among small farms than other government payments. CRP payments target environmentally sensitive cropland and increasingly enroll grasslands in support of grazing operations, with most payments going to retirement farms, off-farm occupation farms and low-sales farms. In contrast, most countercyclical-type and Natural Resources Conservation Service payments went to family farms with a GCFI of $350,000 or more.

• Overall, 16% of farms participated in federal crop insurance in 2023, up from 14% in 2022. Participation varied by production, with 66% of farms producing row crops purchasing insurance compared with 12% of farms producing livestock.

• Indemnities from federal crop insurance were about proportional to the acres of harvested cropland. Midsize and large-scale family farms together accounted for 67% of all harvested cropland acres and received 67% of indemnities from federal crop insurance in 2023.

• Farm households, in general, were not considered low income or low wealth compared with U.S. households. In 2023, median farm household income – including both farm and off-farm income sources – exceeded that for all U.S. households but was lower than the median income of all U.S. households with self-employment income. About 42% of farm households had income below the median for all U.S. households, and 5% had wealth below the U.S. median in 2023.

• About 85% of farm households received more than half of their income from off-farm sources, and 51% had negative income from farming. Reliance on off-farm income sources ranges from 99% of households associated with off-farm occupation farms to 11% of households that were the principal operator of a very large family farm.

• The percent of farms that held on-farm unpriced corn, soybean or wheat commodity – as of December 2023 – increased in line with farm size, with very large farms being the most likely to have on-farm unpriced commodity at 60%. However, no similar trend was observed with off-farm storage, with 12% of low-sales farms and 12% of very large farms reporting unpriced off-farm commodity.

Technology

The survey also included the data of precision agriculture uses by farm type.

• Technologies that mainly provide information to support operators’ decision-making, such as yield monitors, yield maps and soil maps, were used on 13% of small crop-producing farms, but 68% of large-scale crop-producing farms. Similar to other PA technologies, low usage rates of these technologies by small farms were driven by retirement farms, of which 5% adopted, and low-sales farms – GCFI less than $150,000 – that had a 9% adoption rate.

• Guidance auto-steering systems on tractors, harvesters and other equipment were used on 9% of small farms, 52% of midsize farms and 70% of large-scale crop-producing farms. The adoption of these systems, as with several other PA technologies, increases with farm size primarily because larger farms can benefit more from employing these tools than smaller farms.

• Variable rate technology was used moderately across the crop farm size distribution, with adoption rates of 5% for small farms, 32% for midsized farms and 45% for large-scale farms. The scale, structure and soil variability of farms play a large role in explaining these usage patterns.

• The adoption of drones was quite limited, plateauing at 12% of large-scale, crop-producing family farms and 13% of nonfamily farms.

• Precision livestock farming use was low but mixed across farm sizes. Robotic milking was adopted on 19% of large-scale farms that produced milk. The adoption rates for wearable technologies on farms with livestock commodity sales ranged from 1% of small farms to 12% of large-scale farms.

• The motivations underlying farmers’ PA adoption were diverse and broadly consistent with the stated benefits of the technologies. For instance, of the farms that adopted yield monitors, yield maps or soil maps, many did so to increase yields, at 55%, reduce purchased input costs, at 41%, and improve soils or reduce environmental impacts, at 40%.

• These same three factors were among the most common for variable rate technology, although a greater share of VRT adopters were motivated by reducing purchased input costs, at 62%.

• On the other hand, reduced labor time and operator fatigue spurred farmers to adopt precision agriculture technologies having substantial labor-saving potential. Half of all farms on which guidance auto-steering systems were used indicated that saving labor time was a reason for adoption, while the share of farms with robotic milking indicating this as a reason was 77%. Likewise, reduced operator fatigue was a decision factor for 64% of farms using guidance auto-steering and 41% of those using robotic milking.