Farms Decreasing in Number, Increasing in Size

The number of farms in the U.S. in 2016 fell 8,000 to 2.06 million farms according to USDA’s annual look at farms and farmland.

Joe Parsons with NASS said, “That’s really due to the change in the mixture where we’ve had a decrease in lands and farms and also the number of farms but the number of farms decreased slightly more and that’s consistent with the trend that that we’ve seen across time. That gentle increase in the average size of farms.”

Parsons did note the average size was up one acre to 442 acres.

In Oregon, the number of farms decreased by 200 while the average farm size stayed the same. In Washington, the number of farms was down 100 and the average size bumped up one acre to 409.