An ag economist says the total number of farms is declining and the size is increasing. The latest Farm and Land and Farms report from the USDA had average farm acres up 1 acre to 446 acres while the number of farms declined by around 10,000 to 2 million (for reference, in 2015 there were 2.1 million farms reported).
University of Missouri’s Scott Brown says from weather to a lack of succession planning there are a lot of factors contributing to the shift.