Across the country, the US has lost both farms and farmland, according to the latest data from the 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture, released this week. (The census is taken every five years, and USDA statisticians spend time collecting and analyzing the data afterwards, so the results take some time to deliver.) The US is now home to about 880 million acres of farmland, down from 900 million at the time of the last census in 2017. That’s 20 million acres, or as Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack puts it, every state in New England except Connecticut.
The number of farms themselves has also declined from 2017 to 2022, down roughly 142,000 to 1.9 million farms. The last time the country saw numbers this small was 1850. However, the size of the average farm has increased, up five percent.
Farmland now makes up roughly 39 percent of the country, and it has been dropping for decades. Presenting this data Tuesday afternoon, Vilsack says the trend is worrying. The survey, he says, is “a wakeup call” that is “asking us the critical question of whether we as a country are OK with losing that many farms.” Vilsack also notes that the majority of American farmers currently rely on a second off-farm income to supplement their farming income. Vilsack supports diversifying farmers’ income streams to create a “different model” of farming and help prevent the loss of more farmland. “I sincerely hope that we take this information very seriously,” says Vilsak. “It need not be that every five years we report fewer farms and less farmland. It doesn’t have to be.”
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What the article above describes is exactly what University of Michigan researcher (and Michigan farm girl) Dr Sarah Mills described to me several years ago, along with how clean energy can be a solution.
Below, farmer Clara Ostrander of Azalia, Michigan, spoke about the challenges of maintaining a family farm in the face of rising taxes and low crop prices.
She shared the podium with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, at the signing of a package of clean energy and climate bills that will protect farmer’s rights to site, and benefit from, clean energy.