By KEVIN WALKER
Michigan Correspondent

LANSING, Mich. — The most recent Census of Agriculture shows that the number of farms in Michigan has actually increased over the past several years.

The catch is that most of those farms are small. The long-term trend toward concentration of farmland into fewer hands is continuing even though the reduction in the total number of farms has been halted, at least for now. Although the total number of farms increased in recent years, the number of mid-size farms continues to decrease.

These trends hold true for Michigan as with the rest of the country generally.

These statistics, along with a plethora of other facts and figures, were made available to the public earlier this month in the 2007 Census of Agriculture.

“We’re catching more of these small farms and there’s more of them, too,” said Dan Ledbury, acting director of the Michigan Office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). “When you get to some of these middle groups, you can see there’s more of them on the smaller side.”

Ledbury also said that there are a number of what he called “point farms” that are included in the survey: these are farms that grow or raise something but don’t have any actual sales during the survey year.

In Michigan the total number of farms increased by five percent from 2002-2007. During this period the total number of farms in the state went from 53,315 to 56,014. The average size of the farm went from 190 acres to 179 acres, or minus six percent. Nationwide, the number of farms increased by four percent during this same time frame.

According to a document from the 2007 census, “the number of farms nationwide has been on a declining trend since World War II. The latest figure indicates a leveling of this trend, with a net increase of 75,810 farms. Most of the growth in U.S. farm numbers came from small operations.”

In Michigan, the number of farms with one to nine acres went from 1,372 in 2002 to 1,718 in 2007. Those with 10-49 acres went from 11,007 in 2002 to 11,499 in 2007. Those with 50-69 acres went from 3,128 in 2002 to 3,266 in 2007.

The number of farms with 500-999 acres decreased in this same time period, from 2,761 to 2,537. The number of farms with 1,000-1,999 acres also went down, from 1,444 to 1,407. The number of acres harvested in this last category decreased by about 34,000 acres.

Farms of over 2,000 acres, however, increased in number. The number of these farms went from 490 in 2002 to 542 in 2007. The number of acres harvested increased in this time period from about 1.3 million to nearly 1.6 million.

According to another census document that focuses on nationwide trends, “another way of looking at concentration [in agriculture] is the share of agricultural production produced by farms with more than $1 million in sales. In 2007, farms in this sales class produced 59 percent of U.S. agricultural production, while in 2002 farms in this sales class produced 47 percent of all production.”

Nationwide, there are some countervailing trends to the overall increase in the number of farms, that may be more or less significant: farms that specialize in “grains and oilseeds, horticulture, cattle and hog operations – saw a decline in farm numbers.” Although the number of “hogs and pigs” operations in the country went down – by about 3,000 – the number in Michigan went up, from 2,180 in 2002 to 2,691 in 2007. The inventory went up, too, from about 927,000 animals to about one million.
Ledbury pointed out, though, that 770,000 of those hogs in inventory are owned by only 142 farms, those with over 2,000 hogs in their inventory.

The USDA is also highlighting increased “diversity” on farms today. According to the latest census, there are 30 percent more farms with female principal operators in 2007 than in 2002 and 10 percent more with Hispanic principal operators. There was also an increase in American Indian, African American and Asian American farm operators compared to the last census.

“They’ve been wanting to provide more information on diversity in agriculture; that’s been on some peoples’ radar screen for awhile,” Ledbury said.

The 2007 Census of Agriculture is available online, free of charge at www.agcensus.usda.gov