What's New In U.S. Agriculture--Tales from the 2022 Census of Agriculture
On February 13, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) released the national, state, and county level results from the 2022 Census of Agriculture for the 50 states, a snapshot of the U.S. agricultural economy that has been conducted every five years since 1954. Prior to that year, it had been conducted every ten years as part of the required decennial census. In 1997, budgetary responsibility for this function was shifted from the Bureau of the Census (in the Commerce Department) to USDA, although Bureau of Census employees are still heavily involved in survey design and initial data processing. Data for agriculture in U.S. possessions and territories, such as Puerto Rico and American Samoa, will be released later.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack spoke at the press conference when Volume 1 of the Census was released, along with Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education, and Economics (REE) Chavonda Jacobs-Young and the Administrator for the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), Hubert Hamer. NASS is the agency which houses Census data on its website. The Secretary’s comments focused on the noticeable decline in the number of U.S. farms and the number of farmland acres between the last Census in 2017 and this current one, reducing the number of farms by nearly 7 percent below 2 million for the first time in U.S. history, even with the rather loose definition of a farm under Census rules (farm had to produce and sell at least $1,000 in farm products in the census year). The number of farmland acres also fell by 20 million (2 percent) from 900 million to 880 million. The number of farms declined in every farm size category, though the smallest decline–only 2.1 percent–was in the largest category of 2,000 acres or more.
There is a somewhat better story to tell about the numbers that reflect the age composition of U.S. farmers. Among all farmers reported in the Census (not just principal operators), the average age continued to increase, from 57.5 years to 58.1 years. However, this increase of one percent represents the small incremental increase since 2007, when the Census began to track all operators, not just principal operators. In addition, the number of farmers in the two youngest reported age categories, between 25 and 34 years, and between 35 and 44 years, both increased, by 2.1 percent and 9.3 percent respectively.
The Census clearly indicates that there is much more work to be done to encourage U.S. farmers and ranchers to adopt key conserving agricultural practices and renewable energy installations. Although it does not collect data on every possible practice, the published Census data does include information on adoption rates (and acreage levels where applicable) for cover cropping, no-till and reduced till cultivation, rotational grazing, and several types of farm-located renewable energy facilities. Among the practices mentioned above, the greatest degree of change recorded between 2017 and 2022 was the use of cover cropping, which was implemented on nearly 17 percent more acres in 2022 than in 2017. However, nearly all that increase occurred with farmers who were already using this practice–the number of farms using this practice actually fell negligibly, by less than 0.01 percent. The number of acres that farmers no-tilled increased slightly, by 0.7 percent, while the area in which reduced till cultivation was used actually fell by 0.7 percent.
On the livestock side, the number of operations reporting use of rotational grazing practices fell by about 10 percent, while the number reporting use of on-farm methane digesters fell negligibly, by less than 0.01 percent.
Other on-farm renewable energy installations had mixed results. The number of farms with solar panels increased by nearly 30 percent between 2017 and 2022, while the number of wind turbines owned by farmers rose more modestly, by 2.6 percent, while wind turbines placed on leased land by outside firms rose by 2 percent. Due to improved solar technology over the last few decades, energy generated with solar panels is deemed to be the cheapest source of energy of any kind (renewable or fossil-based) at $0.06 to $0.08 per kilowatt-hour, even when taking into account its intermittent availability, by the International Energy Agency. This improvement likely explains much of the fairly impressive gains for solar installations on farms over the last five years.
The robust gains for cover cropping likely reflect the availability of a cover crop-specific incentive in 2021 and 2022, namely a program that provided a modest ($5 per acre) crop insurance premium discount to farmers using this practice. The more broad-based sets of resources that were authorized in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 totaling nearly $20 billion for adoption of ‘climate-smart agricultural practices’’ and technical assistance as well as $820 million to encourage farm use of renewable energy from the same legislation through the Rural Energy for America Program (REAP) was not passed until August 2022, long after cultivation practices for that crop year were already in place. The first tranche of funding from this legislation of $3 billion was made available to farmers beginning in September 2023, and the rest is scheduled to be distributed over the next several years. Thus, these incentives will be reflected in the next (2027) Census of Agriculture, as will results of the 141 climate-smart projects funded under the Partnership for Climate-Smart Commodities which are beginning to enroll producers this year.
