In the recent post, US Farmer Age is Inversely Related to Value of Production, average farm producer age in 2022 was 55 years of age on farms that had over $1,000,000 in annual farm production.  All 3.5 million farm producers average age was 58.1 years.  The oldest category as defined in Volume 1, Table 72 of the 2022 Census of Agriculture, were producers that produced less than $1,000 of value.  The age of this category was 60.5 years old.  These accounted for 11 percent of harvested crop acres and nearly 10 percent of the land and machinery assets on the basis of reported value.

In the earlier post, there were four categories that were reported separately by value of farm production: Over $1,000,000, $500,000 to $999,999, $250,000 to $499,999, and $100,000 to $249,999.  When combined these farms accounted for 22 percent of all farm producers and had an average age of 56 years old.

Today’s chart starts with these for highest value of production groups combined.  Each value of production group is presented in three categories of age: Younger than 45 years of age, 45 to 64 years of age, and 65 years of age and older.  The first group, over $100,000 in value of production, has both the highest share of producers younger than 45 years of age and of producers 45 years to 64 years of age.  There were 26 percent of these producers younger than 45 years and 41 percent of these producers between 45 and 64 years of age.  Two thirds of producers producing over $100,000 of value were younger than 65 years old.  This group had the lowest share of producers 65 years and old, 33 percent.

While this group represents 22 percent of producers, it also represents 96 percent of the value of farm production in 2022.  Age of producers is not a threat to delivery of farm produced goods and services.

In the other three categories representing farm value of production, producers over 65 years of age is the highest category.  It is over 50 percent in all but the group producing less than $1,000 of production.  In these same three categories, producers under 45 years of age declines to 16 percent in the lowest value group.

This data shows that value of production in dollars, is not the only measure of value to these producers.  In 2022, there were 900,000 producers on 500,000 farms.  With 84 percent of these producers over the age of 45 years, this category is also the keeper of farm production memory of cultural heritage.  For these producers the act of farming is more important than turning a profit.