Approximately 294,000 U.S. farms operated on 10 or fewer acres in 2007. While most small acreage (SA) operations did little farming, about 50,000 had sales of $10,000 or more in 2007. This report focuses on SA farms, especially those grossing $10,000 or more per year, and examines such characteristics as production strategies, types of products, sales, household income, and financial performance.
What Is the Issue?
Roughly 13 percent of U.S. farms (294,000) operated on 10 acres or less in 2007, and
while most of these small acreage (SA) farms generated very little, if any, farm production,
some managed to attain sizeable sales despite their limited land base. Given
strong and growing empirical evidence that larger farms are more efficient at producing
most farm products, what factors account for the apparent continuing financial viability
of some small acreage farms? This report looks at small acreage farms having gross
sales of $10,000 or more in a given year to better understand the product choices and
strategies used by small acreage farms that appear to be operating profitably.
What Did the Study Find?
Almost one-sixth of all U.S. farms in 2007 were SA farms with 10 or fewer acres.
These operations controlled approximately 1.7 million acres of farmland (only 0.18
percent of the 922.1 million total acres of U.S. farmland in 2007). However, total sales
of all SA farms were approximately $9 billion in 2007, or 3 percent of total U.S. farm
sales.
Most SA farms in 2007 produced very little, if any, farm products; yet, 17 percent
of SA farms (50,000) had gross sales of at least $10,000. Approximately 122,000
operations, or 42 percent of all SA farms, reported sales under $1,000 in 2007, while 41
percent reported sales between $1,000 and just under $10,000.
Small acreage does not necessarily mean small sales. Over 30,000 SA farms had
sales between $10,000 and $50,000 in 2007, while 6,000 SA farms grossed over
$250,000 and 3,600 had sales of at least $500,000. These farms tended to specialize in
a single stage of the production process when raising livestock, or they produced highvalue
crops. They produced very little or no field crops, which require large acreages.
Product specializations varied with the size of the farm. The 3,600 farms in
the largest SA sales class, at least $500,000 in sales in 2007, consisted primarily of
confined hog and poultry operations. But the 46,000 farms with sales between $10,000
and $500,000 in 2007 focused primarily on high-value crops like floriculture, tree
nurseries, orchards, and vegetables.
Source:USDA