Beginning and established farm operations produced a differing mix of primary commodities in 2022

In 2022, farms with all beginning operators stood apart from operations with either a mixture of beginning and established operators and those with all established operators, in terms of commodity specialization, according to a report by USDA, Economic Research Service. U.S. farms were divided into one of three segments based on the operators’ experience. The first, all beginning farm operations, are those where all operators have no more than 10 years of experience on any farm or ranch, which accounted for 23 percent of all operations in 2022. The second, established operations mean all operators have more than 10 years of experience farming or ranching (67 percent of all operations). Finally, multigenerational beginning operations include a mix of the two, accounting for 10 percent of all operations. In 2022, all beginning farm operations were slightly more likely to be primarily fruit or vegetable producers than multigenerational beginning and established operations (10 percent versus 9 and 6 percent, respectively). All beginning farms were more likely to produce poultry (7 percent) compared to multigenerational beginning (4 percent) and established (3 percent) operations. The high degree of vertical integration of the U.S. poultry sector, in which a large share of poultry is grown under production contracts, may play a role in the composition of farmers’ experience in this sector. All beginning operations were also less likely to produce field crops than the other two farm types (12 percent for all beginning versus 19 and 20 percent for multigenerational beginning and established, respectively), which is consistent with increased consolidation and changes in farmland availability over the past three decades. This chart appears in Beginning Farmer and Rancher Operations: Characteristics Associated With Business Survival, published March 2026.