The past century of consolidation in US cropland has been identified as one factor undermining resilience in US agriculture. Past research links increasing farm size with unsustainable forms of intensification and negative impacts on community wellbeing. Further, consolidation may exacerbate the current crisis of a declining and aging farming population by creating barriers to new farmers. Little research, however, has directly addressed the latter issue.
This study addresses this gap by asking (1) How has consolidation (as the share of cropland in farms over 1000 acres) shifted between 1978 and 2017, and (2) How are such trends connected with barriers to entry into farming? We draw on national county-level data (48 states) from the US Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture on the distribution of crop farms and harvested cropland acreage across farm size classes and farmer demographic data. We characterize trends in consolidation of harvested cropland, overall and in the most affected counties (top 10%) relating them to (1) average farmer age, an indicator of new farmer entry; and (2) average value of farmland per operation, as a barrier to cropland access. We then fit multilevel regression models to quantify associations between farmer age, farmland value and consolidation.
Results/Conclusions
Overall, results lend support to concerns that cropland consolidation creates barriers to participation in farming (all results refer to changes from 1978 to 2017). Harvested cropland in large farms (> 1000 acres in size) collectively grew by 105.5 million acres, while that in midsize farms (50-999 acres) shrunk by 96.7 million acres. Midsize crop farms decreased by 696,907 farms, while large crop farms decreased by only 557 farms. Over the same period, harvested cropland in small farms (<50 acres) decreased by 215,000 acres, while small crop farms increased by 36,000. Average farmer age increased by 8 years across all counties and by 9.5 years in the 10% of counties experiencing the most consolidation. Farmland value per operation increased by 71% across all counties, and by 139% in the top 10% (as above). Multilevel modeling of cropland-dominant counties (>20,000 acres of cropland, minimum 2:1 ratio of cropland to pasture and rangeland, N=1981 of 3063 total counties) shows consolidation to be a significant (p < .0005) but weak predictor of farmer age (beta = 0.009) and farmland value (beta = 0.012). Efforts to enhance the resilience of US agriculture will likely require addressing barriers to land access for new entry farmers.