On the Farm
The 39th annual Hawkeye Farm Show begins today in Cedar Falls…running through Thursday. We’ll be there each day of the show again this year.
Last year, there was a great deal of optimism at the start of a new presidential administration. The high cost of input prices alone this year might temper some of that.
Data from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service on Farms and Land in Farms is a bit concerning.
We lost 15,000 farms in 2025 compared with the year before…but no state reported an increase in farms, and while the decline may have slowed last year, we have lost 127,000 farms in this country since 2020…that’s 2.5 million fewer acres in farms.
We have 86,700 farms in the state of Iowa, second highest total in the nation. Texas has the most, by far, at 231,000. Iowa stands 1,000 farms ahead of number three Missouri.
But another number may tell the real story. 78.8 percent of all U.S. farms generate less than $100,000 in annual sales…and nearly half—48 percent—only generate less than $10,000.
Farms with at least a million dollars in revenue make up only 3.9 percent of the total…but that 3.9 percent of farms operates 36 percent of all farmland in the country. That is significantly higher than at the start of the decade.
The big get bigger, the rich get richer…and the traditional family farm stands alone.
