EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Agricultural Policy, Economics, and Diverse Farms and Farmers

Stephen Morgan and Samantha L. Padilla

Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, 2025, vol. 40, issue 2

Abstract: The design, implementation, and evaluation of agricultural policy serves a landscape of diverse farms and farmers who each face different opportunities and challenges. Farm operations vary across key characteristics including farm size, commodities produced, geography, and soil characteristics, among many others. In 2022, just over 1.9 million farms in the United States operated over 880.1 million acres (U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2024). Around 88% of farms were classified as small family farms, those with a gross cash farm income (GCFI) of less than $350,000. These farms operate 46% of U.S. agricultural land, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the total value of agricultural production (Whitt et al., 2023). Large-scale family farms—those with a GCFI greater than $1 million— accounted for 52% of the value of production in 2022. Farm diversity is also linked to the types of commodities produced. For example, small farms account for the largest share of production value for poultry, eggs, and hay, while large-scale family farms lead in beef, hogs, cash grains/soybeans, cotton, dairy, and specialty crops (Whitt et al., 2023).

Keywords: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/358752/files/Deciphering%20physiological.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaeach:358752

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.358752

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().

 
Page updated 2025-06-11
Handle: RePEc:ags:aaeach:358752