Farms Getting Bigger And Fewer

American farms are getting fewer in number and larger in size, a new Census Bureau study shows.

Confirming a popularly recognized pattern, the study reveals that the number of large farms increased six-fold between 1969 and 1992. That beefing up coincided with a shrinking number of operating farms, from 2.7 million to 1.9 million during the same period.

“This trend of farms getting larger, it seems like it’s really accelerated in the past 10 years,” said Jeffrey Kissel, the Maryland-based Census Bureau statistician who compiled the new report.

California was not immune to the trend. And for members of Congress and Agriculture Department officials, as well as farmers themselves, it’s a shift with potentially important implications.

“It’s going on all the time; it’s happening right around me, daily,” said Glenn Anderson, who grows almonds on 40 acres near Hilmar, south of Turlock, Calif. “It’s the larger farms that have all of the equipment; whoever is aggressive is picking up their neighbors’ property.”

Anderson, president of the Davis-based Community Alliance with Family Farmers, cited several reasons for the farm ownership trend. Older farmers are retiring; when their children aren’t interested in carrying on, the land is sold off. Farmland is being paved over for suburbs. Marginal farms can’t make it.

Nationwide, the new study shows, large farms are much more likely to be operated by full-time farmers. Anderson, for one, said he can only afford to farm full-time because he can charge more for his organically grown nuts.

The large farms are more likely to receive government subsidies, and they spin out greater net cash returns. Much greater: Large farm profits averaged $83,812, compared to $1,836 for small farms.

The study used gross sales to determine size; farms with annual sales over $100,000 were called large. In Anderson’s case, his gross farm income fluctuates above and below $100,000 a year. But size, the study shows, isn’t merely a matter of money. Though large farms made up less than 20 percent of all farms, they operated on more than 54 percent of the nation’s farmland.

“There’s more consolidation and concentration,” said Bill Allison, manager of the Fresno County Farm Bureau, “but I don’t see it going to being only a few, large farms.”

Allison noted that three-quarters of Fresno County’s 7,000-plus farms are still 180 acres or smaller. That’s not to say, however, that these farms are harvesting a proportionate share of the profits.

Nationwide, the new survey study shows, 17 percent of the farms rake in 83 percent of the sales. These larger farms, moreover, are more likely to tap the federal government’s array of crop subsidies.

While about one-quarter of farms with sales less than $100,000 received government subsidies, 57 percent of the large farms received such payments in 1992.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Scripps-McClatchy Western Service