Farms and ranches with all beginning operators tended to be smaller than others in 2022

In 2022, farms and ranches having operators with limited experience tended to be smaller than their more experienced counterparts. Beginning operators are farmers or ranchers with no more than 10 years of experience operating any farm or ranch. The USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS) used farmer and rancher responses to the 2022 Agricultural Census to divide operations into three experience categories: “all beginning” refers to farms in which all operators on the farm or ranch are beginning; “established” refers to operations in which all operators have more than 10 years of experience; and “multigenerational beginning” refers to operations with a mix of beginning and established operators. While multigenerational beginning and experienced operations had similar size distributions, farms and ranches designated as “all beginning” were smaller, on average. In 2022, 58 percent of all beginning operations were on farms of 49 or fewer acres compared to 36 percent of multigenerational beginning and 38 percent of established operations. At the other end of the distribution, 6 percent of the “all beginning” group operated 500 acres or more, compared with 19 percent of multigenerational beginning operations and 17 percent of established operations. While acreage is only one measure of farm scale, ERS researchers also found a similar pattern using annual gross cash farm income (GCFI), a broad measure of farm income before expenses. Roughly 86 percent of all beginning operations were in the lowest GCFI category of less than $75,000, higher than the 67 percent of multigenerational beginning operations and 72 percent of established operations. This chart appears in Beginning Farmer and Rancher Operations: Characteristics Associated With Business Survival, published in March 2026.