Three Decades of Consolidation in U.S. Agriculture

Agricultural production has shifted to much larger farming operations over the last three decades, even as the number of very small farms grows. Consolidation of acreage and production has been persistent, widespread, and pronounced in crop production. Structural change has been quite dramatic in some livestock commodities—such as dairy, egg laying, and hogs—but consolidation has been modest or nonexistent in pasture/grazing land and in the associated cow-calf sector. This report, based on detailed farm-level data, measures trends in consolidation and tracks developments in farm-level specialization as well as the organization of farming businesses