The number of farms in the United States for 2016 is estimated at 2.06 million, down 8,000 farms from the previous year.
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that total land in farms, at 911 million acres, also decreased by 1 million acres from 2015, in its “Farms and Land in Farms 2016 Summary” report.
The average farm size for 2016 is 442 acres, up one acre from the previous year, according to AgFax.
Farm numbers and land in farms are differentiated by six economic sales classes.
Farms and ranches are classified into these six sales classes by summing the sales of agricultural products and government program payments.
Sales class breaks occur at $10,000, $100,000, $250,000, $500,000 and $1,000,000. Farmers and ranchers were asked during the 2016 mid-year surveys to report the value of sales based on production during the 2015 calendar year.
Point Farms are farms that did not have the required minimum $1,000 in sales for the year to qualify as a farm, but had sufficient crops and livestock to normally have sales of $1,000 or more.
The 2012 Census of Agriculture showed that 428,810 farms, or 20.3 percent, of the 2.11 million farms were Point Farms.
These Point Farms operated 63.0 million acres or 6.9 percent of the 914.5 million acres of farmland.
The number of farms also declined by 8,000 from 2015.
The number of farms in Sales Class $250,000-$499,999 increased, while all other sales classes declined slightly.
Fifty percent of all farms had less than $10,000 in sales.
Eighty percent of all farms had less than $100,000 in sales, and eight percent of all farms had sales of $500,000 or more, according to AgFax.
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