We've lost 14,950 farms and 2,100,000 acres of farmland since 2023

The USDA has reported the loss of farmland in the U.S. for 2024. The numbers line up with a trend that's been going on for years, totaling 150,000 farms lost since 2017.

There’s a mad dash for American farmland right now. Investors, foreign entities, big agricultural conglomerates that I would call anything but ‘farms,’ Wall Street, billionaires, and developers are aware that $24 trillion dollars worth of farmland is going to change hands starting now, in 2025, through 2045.

How did the 2025 Farmers’ Almanac know that a wealth transfer of $24 trillion dollars was about to ensue?

It’s based off the average age of the American farmer being over 60. Farmers are hard-working people, and many of them don’t plan to retire at 61, or even 71. But, with only 9% of the working U.S. farming population being under the age of 35 right now, it doesn’t take a math professor to see we are dealing with an upside down pyramid. In 2022, more than one-third of the U.S. farming population was over 65. At the close of 2024, that percentage has increased to nearly 40%. The trend is obvious, and the amount of young farmers stepping up to support the system are simply not enough to shoulder the farmland wealth exchange.

The 2024 Farms and Land in Farms 2024 Summary by the USDA was released earlier this month, detailing the following:

• we lost 14,950 farms

• we lost 2,100,000 acres of farmland

…in just one year. The report went on to detail something peculiar that I couldn’t help but notice. While we are losing overall acreage and farms in operation, the average size of farming operations is increasing in size. The average farm size clocked in at 466 acres, up from 464 acres in 2023.

If farms are disappearing, farmers are retiring, and farmland is for sale around the country, how are farms increasing in size?

It points to a trend that smells of corporate consolidation.

Before someone comments that I am fear-mongering here, I am merely reporting what came out in this USDA summary this month. If it sounds alarming, well, it’s because it is. However, I am an optimist and a futurist, and believe that we are capable of stopping this trend, or changing how we farm in the decades to come. But first, we have to acknowledge what is happening right before our very eyes.

I also want to note that I am by no means ‘judging’ or making comments about what farmers decide to do with their farms when they are 70. I see it all the time. Farms of 100 acres or larger are managed by a couple, usually in their 70s, barely able to stand upright from the decades of labor they put into their operations. I don’t necessarily see their kids anywhere (or they didn’t have any). Farming was not presented to the millennial generation as a profitable, enjoyable, or ‘impressive’ career. It was beaten into our heads that farming is a pursuit better left for the ‘rural folks.’ Or that farming will break your body into two pieces, making it a miserable existence.

The way we’ve farmed for decades has made farming a difficult pursuit, there’s no doubt. But to change this trend, we have to change how negatively we talk about farming as a career.

These couples reach the age of 75, look each other in the face, and go, “We did it. We ran a farm our whole lives. We made a living. But we can’t do it anymore. We need to rest.”

They sell the farms. Many times they are carrying debts from tractors or other farming inputs. Selling is their only option. They are so tired, and so worn out from so many years working the land, that being altruistic and setting up nonprofits to protect the farmland, etc. is not top of mind for them. I do not blame them!

Who swoops in to buy the farm before it has a chance to hit the public market? The powers that be, of course. Based on the fact that farm sizes are increasing in acreage, that tells me that the massive conglomerate corporate agricultural empires are absorbing these small-to-medium sized farms to crush out their future competition.

Here’s why that’s a problem.

Image source: https://capitaloneshopping.com/blog/11-companies-that-own-everything-904b28425120

Around 11 companies control every single food, pharmacy, self-care, and beverage item available to you at the grocery store. The same kind of system exists for the companies in charge of the massive farms that control exactly what they farm, how they farm it, and what they charge for it by the time it reaches our shelves. By having no competition, these ag conglomerates are able to soak their produce in pesticides, administer animal cruelty conditions for meat and dairy processing, feed the animals the least nutritional inputs as possible, and do it all in the name of profit.

The losers? Me, you, our collective health, the environment, Mother Nature, and animals everywhere.

For the farmland that doesn’t end up absorbed into toxic farming empires, it’s turned into developments, parking lots, solar farms, or added to a foreign or billionaire portfolio. Developers aren’t shy about admitting that farmland is attractive to them. It’s land that’s already been worked, cleared, leveled, and is ripe for new buildings.

But Alex, our expanding population needs to live somewhere.

We can build VERTICALLY! We have enough infrastructure everywhere to start building up. Other countries are already doing this. We already have hideous suburbs everywhere. Add to them. Absorbing pristine, historic fertile American farmland to roll out cookie-cutter apartments that are probably too expensive for the average American, anyway, is the last thing we should doing.

So, what should we be doing about this?

Not all hope is lost. The numbers don’t lie… we have a problem that threatens our food autonomy in the future. It’s a problem that undermines what it means to be American. Every lost acre of farmland is a loss of conservation, local farming knowledge, history, and culture for many rural areas around the United States.

I believe the best way to combat this is to get involved with any kind of farming, gardening, vertical farming, urban gardening, or conservationism. While these Frankenstein farm empires grow in size, give them the middle finger by working a small farm on your end. Work just a few acres. You don’t need to compete with these corporations for space on grocery store shelves. We have options today for taking our food directly to our neighbors and communities. Sell whatever it is that you grow:

• at a farm stand (I do this)

• at a farmers’ market

• through a CSA (community-supported-agriculture pickups)

Many farms around me are already doing this. All you need is a few dozen families to sign onto your CSA to cover your expenses if you’re working just an acre or two.

My farm stand caught on quickly with my neighbors after I opened it. You barely need to market your stand. Eventually, people in your area will become aware it’s there. Throw a few posts in local Facebook groups every now and then to show them what you offer. Pin some flyers or handouts to bulletins. Join a local chamber of commerce and let everyone know who you are and what you offer.

At least 50% of the U.S. population tries to actively eat healthy. The desire is there. Instead of one huge agriculture corporation that works 2,000 acres, destroys the soil, poisons the food, and poisons the water (when I lived in Florida, it was accepted that the sugar cane empires in the middle of the state flush their toxins into the canals, which empty into the Gulf, causing the red tide that kills millions of marine animals), we can replace that conglomerate with 100 small full-time, part-time, and community driven operations.

And if you want to tell me that farming is too hard of work and no one wants to get their hands dirty, I would challenge you to go on TikTok or YouTube today and look at what’s trending. Nearly every millennial I talk to either wants chickens, a garden, to grow their family’s food, or to earn money through a farming side hustle. A farming Renaissance is upon us, and this transfer of wealth may be the catalyst we have been needing to make lasting changes.

I am doing my part in the best way I know how this year, farming on just two-acres, inquiring about a high tunnel, selling at a farm stand, and potentially considering a CSA or local farmers’ market. I will be detailing it all, especially the monetary elements of it, here for those of you curious. Like I always say, I am happy to be the case study in my own experiment! If I can do this solo, you can, too.

As this is one of my free articles, here is my ‘buy me some seeds’ profile if you feel inclined.

All funds raised through this link will be 100% used to buy native seeds, plants, and my greater conservation work at the farm.

Thank you all: https://buymeacoffee.com/alexfasulo.

Follow along!