An Aging Farm Population: Cause for Concern?

Key Points

• Primary farm operator ages are increasing, but at a rate slower than US life expectancy trends, and they do not present an immediate danger to the availability of agricultural products or farmland production.

• Farms classified as midsize and larger represent around 10 percent of all farms and 80 percent of production and have substantially younger primary operators than farms classified as small family farm operations.

• Primary operators in agriculture tend to be slightly older than US business owners, and the gap can be attributed to the tax and capital gains advantages to retaining farmland.

• Farm operations that are classified as midsize and larger often have multiple farm operators that are younger with some transition plan intact.

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Introduction

Every five years, the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Census of Agriculture provides an update on the farm economy and demographics, which can help explain the dynamic environment that farmers and consumers rely on for their food. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has called the 2022 census “a wake-up call to everyone who plays a role in agriculture policy or who shares an interest in preserving a thriving rural America.”¹ The fact that, according to the census data, farmers are growing older has been a concern for the secretary and other policymakers. Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), for example, has asserted that “the aging of farmers on top of regulatory, economic, and foreign pressures puts the future of the nation and world’s food supply in peril.”²

The data from the 2022 census, combined with the findings of previous censuses over the past seven decades, indicate that the average age of the US farm operator has steadily increased from 48.7 in 1945 to 58.1 in 2022.³ But is the farm sector facing an impending retirement cliff as aging farmers move out of agriculture without any younger operators to replace them? Will there be fewer farms, less land under cultivation, and reduced agricultural output as a result? And is there an accompanying threat of an increasingly concentrated agriculture dominated by fewer large operations that can exercise market power with adverse consequences for the price of food and fiber? Although there continues to be a long-run downward trend in the number of farms, a multi-decade decline largely driven by other factors, the answer to all these questions is an unambiguous no.

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Notes

1. US Department of Agriculture, “Agriculture Secretary Vilsack Statement on the Release of the 2022 Census of Agriculture,” press release, February 13, 2024, https://www.usda.gov/media/press-releases/2024/02/13/agriculture-secretary-vilsack-statement-release-2022-census.
2. Mike Braun, Feeding the Future: Farmers Are America’s Oldest Workforce. How Are We Preparing for the Next Generation?, US Senate Committee on Aging, October 2023, 2, https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/senate_aging_farmers_report.pdf.
3. US Department of Agriculture, Census of Agriculture: 1945, 241, https://agcensus.library.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/1945-Age_Residence_Years_on_Farm_and_Work_off_Farm-1945-02-full.pdf; and US Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2022 Census of Agriculture: United States Summary and State Data, February 2024, Table 52,
   https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/AgCensus/2022/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_US/usv1.pdf.