According to the Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are 3.4 million agricultural “producers,” or the farmers and workers involved in making decisions from planting to harvesting to marketing on these farms. Among them, 63.7% of are male, 63.2% are ages 55 or older, 95.4% are white and 84.7% work on family-held farms.
More than 1.9 million farms dot the nation, covering 880.1 million acres. That's more than twice the size of Alaska.
What is the difference between a farmer and a farmworker?
The latest USDA agricultural census defines the 3.4 million “producers” as the farmers and workers involved in making decisions from planting to harvesting to marketing on these farms. This category could refer to the farm’s owner, a member of the owner’s family, a manager, a tenant, a renter, or a sharecropper.
The USDA also makes a distinction between producers and employees known as farmworkers. Farmworkers are hired labor and have a variety of occupations ranging from field crop workers to sales agents and truck drivers. Data in this article focuses on producers.
What are the demographics of US farmers?
The number of farmers in the 2022 agricultural census decreased 0.8% (or by 25,970) than what was counted a decade prior.
In 2022, 63.7% of farmers were male. They also tended to be older: 63.2% of agricultural workers were over 55, up from 62.0% in 2017. In addition to being older and more male than the general population, farmers are more likely to be veterans. While 6.2% of the adult population are veterans, 9.1% of farmers have served at some point.
Farmers are, by a large majority, white, with 95.4% of all farmers falling in that category. The second and third most common racial identities are American Indian or Alaskan Native or Black: 1.7% and 1.2%, respectively.
Hispanic or Latino farmers, which could be of any race, make up 3.3% of all producers.
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Where are the farmers working and living?
70.5% of agriculture producers live on farm-operated property.
Texas leads all states with the number of farmers: 409,682. That's 2.9% of the state’s labor force.
The Midwest and central South region rounds out the top five states with the most farmers:
- Missouri (159,688, or 5.4% of the labor force)
- Iowa (157,531 or 9.5% of the labor force)
- Ohio (136,309 or 2.5% of the labor force)
- Oklahoma (126,352 or 6.9% of the labor force)
The largest state has the 2nd fewest farmers: Alaska's 586,400 square miles had 2,185 farmers in 2022.
Though they’re not in the top 20 states with the most farms, the Dakotas have the highest proportion of farm producers in the labor force: 11.4% of South Dakotans and 11.0% of North Dakotans.
How big are US farms? What do they grow?
The average size of the 1.9 million American farms is 463 acres. However, 61% of farmland belongs to the 83,308 farms that exceed 2,000 acres in size.
Family-held farms, by the USDA’s definition, are owned by a single person or members of the same family, accounting for 84.7% of all farms and 57.8% of all farmlands.
About 50.8% of farms are classified as primarily growing crops rather than raising animals. Another 17.4% of farms are predominantly classified as growing oilseed or grains like corn, wheat, and soybeans, while 28.1% of farms focus on beef cattle ranching.
On average, a farm earned a net profit of $79,790 in 2022. That year, 815,397 farms reported profits, while 1.1 million reported losses. Overall, farmers earned $151.6 billion in net profits in 2022.
Even though farms account for less than 1% of the national GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says farm products contribute to other parts of the economy, including manufacturing, restaurants, and retail.
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Page sources and methodology
All of the data on the page was sourced directly from government agencies. The analysis and final review was performed by USAFacts.
Department of Agriculture
Census of Agriculture
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Labor Force Characteristics
