Sunday, March 3, 2013

Am I a Big Farmer?

According to this chart from Big Picture Agriculture, our operation is in the top ten percent of farms by income:

There are 2.2 million farms in the U.S. The USDA’s definition of a farm is “any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year”.
The total number of farms decreased by 11,630 last year and the average farm size increased by 1 acre, to 421 acres.
With the higher commodity prices in the past five years, we've slid into the top bracket there.  It would be interesting to see that top bracket broken down amongst the giant farmers, and the ones like us, who farm 900 acres of middling soils and barely crack $500,000 in gross sales.  Compared to the guys 5 times our size (or the ones 20 times our size) we just don't seem like a big deal.  Then again, my cattle and egg operations are on the very low end of that 55% slice of the pie.

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