Q. How many farmers are there?
A. Until recently, farm data sources
in the United States assumed one farmer (or operator)
per farm. Under this assumption, there are 2.1 million
farm operators (table 1).
Some farms have more than one operator, defined as anyone
who makes day-to-day-decisions about the farm business.
For example, the spouse, a sibling, or an adult child
of the primary operator may also be operators. New data
show that the primary and secondary operators total 2.9
million. These data indicate that the “one farm,
one operator” rule understates the count of farm
operators by about 800,000.
The USDA’s 2002 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS)
asked respondents to report the number of operators on their farms
and to provide more detailed information – such as age and
major occupation – for up to three operators. ARMS data are
used here to get a count of all operators and identify farms with
multiple operators. The ARMS data are also useful in answering two
questions related to farms with more than one operator:
- What kinds of farms have multiple operators?
- Can multiple-operator farms provide a substantial number of
“replacement farmers” as the current primary operators
age?
Characteristics of Multiple-Operator Farms
Understanding multiple-operator farms is important, because they
produce a large share of agricultural output. It turns out that
the 32 percent of U.S. farms with multiple operators account for
a disproportionate 50-percent share of agricultural production.
Today’s larger commercial farms often require more management
and labor than an individual can provide. The number of operators
per farm increases with sales, from an average of 1.3 for farms
with sales less than the $10,000 to an average of 1.8 for farms
with sales of $500,000 or more. About 55 percent of farms in that
sales class had two or more operators, or 23 percentage points more
than the corresponding estimate for all U.S. farms.
About half of all dairy farms had multiple operators, including
two-thirds of dairy farms with sales greater than $250,000. This
is not surprising, given the labor required in dairying.
One type of multiple-operator farm is the multiple-generation farm,
with at least 25 years difference between the ages of the oldest
and youngest operators. Of the nearly 700,000 multiple-operator
farms, only 12 percent are multiple-generation operations (table
1). This percentage increases with farm size, reaching 25 percent
for multiple-operator farms with at least $250,000 in sales. Multiple-generation
farms are more common when the primary operator is either young
or elderly, making up 16 percent of multiple-operator farms when
the primary operator is under 35 and 22 percent when the operator
is at least 65. The share is only 9 percent when the primary operator
is 35 to 64 years old.
Replacement Farmers
The average age of primary farm operators was 55 years in the 2002
Census of Agriculture, and has increase steadily since the 1978
Census, when the average was 51 years. The high – and increasing
– average age of primary operators has led to concern about
the future of farming. However, some potential replacement farmers
are currently working as secondary operators on larger, multiple-generation
farms. Multiple-generation farms number only 86,700, so they could
provide replacement operators for only a fraction of the 2.2 million
U.S. farms. In addition, some secondary operators in multiple-generation
farms perform fairly specialized functions – such as marketing
or field operations – and may not have the broad experience
and skills necessary to take over a large farm.
On the other hand, relatively few replacement farm operators will
be necessary for the largest, commercial-sized farms producing the
bulk of farm products. The 2002 Census of Agriculture estimates
that the 34,100 largest farms account for 50 percent of the sales
of farm products, and the 143,500 largest farms account for 75 percent
of sales. Replacing the operators of these farms from multiple-generation
farms is more feasible.
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