The USDA?s Economic Research Service released the 2022 edition of its America?s Farms and Ranches at a Glance Report. The report provides the latest statistics on U.S. farms, including production, financial performance, COVID-19 assistance, and farm household financial characteristics by farm size.
Noah Miller, research agricultural economist with the ERS, said the numbers show that U.S. farming is still overwhelmingly a family business.
?98 percent of U.S. farms are family-owned and operated, and they accounted for over 80 percent of total value production,? Miller said. ?Of these family farms, small family farms were the largest group accounting for 89 percent of all farms and operating 45 percent of all agricultural land.?
Miller said many of the smaller farms are feeling some financial strain.
?The share of farms with a low-risk operating profit margin, OPM, varied by farm size in 2021,? Miller said. ?54 percent of large family farms had low-risk OPMs, while, on average, only 18 percent of small-scale farms fell in this category. This indicates that smaller farms are at higher risk of financial stress.?
Despite that stress, Miller said farm incomes remain strong.
?Farm households in general are neither low income nor low wealth,? Miller said. ?The median total income of all US family farm households was over $20,000 greater than the median income of all US households in 2021, with median total household income for all family farms Increasing by over $10,000 from the previous year.?
Miller added that row crop farmers continue to take advantage of the federal crop insurance program.
?We found that in 2021, 14 percent of all farms participated in federal crop insurance,? Miller said. ?But for row crop farms, this figure is much higher at 62 percent. Indemnities from federal crop insurance were roughly proportional to harvested crop land. Midsize and large-scale family farms had 66 percent of all harvested cropland acres and received 84 percent of the indemnities.?
For more information, visit ers.usda.gov.
