More than 2.0 million landowners in the United States rent out 348 million acres of farmland, and 79% of those acres belong to landlords who do not farm themselves, according to the 2024 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land survey published on 12 March by the Department of Agriculture's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS).

Non-operating landlords hold their land under a range of arrangements — privately, in trust, through a family entity, through a non-family entity or otherwise. Of the land they rent out, more than 251 million acres is held by private owners, trusts or family entities.

The money involved is substantial. Rented farmland and the buildings on it are valued at more than $1.6 trillion. In 2024 landlords together received $34.1 billion in rental income and carried $12.0 billion in operating expenses.

“About 5% of the nearly 900 million U.S. farmland acres, or about 43 million acres, is slated for ownership transfer in the next five years, not including farmland that is in or is expected to be put into wills or trusts,” said Joseph L. Parsons, the NASS administrator. Of that, only 23 million acres is expected to be sold to someone outside the family, while 20 million acres will be sold to a relative or given as a gift — so only a small share of American farmland will actually come on the market.

The survey also describes who the landlords are. There are 1.8 million non-farming entities acting as principal landlords, and their average age is 69.2 years, against 58.1 years for the average farmer in the 2022 Census of Agriculture. Only 12% are under 55, and nearly 52% have never farmed.

“As the only source of detailed information on agricultural land ownership characteristics and economic data, TOTAL provides important statistics to government, academia, the farming industry, and others regarding agricultural land ownership for planning, policymaking, research, and market analysis,” Parsons said.

The pattern will be familiar to anyone who follows land in Bangladesh, where sharecropping and absentee ownership shape what a cultivator can invest in a plot. What is different is the measurement: the United States counts its rented acres, its landlords and their ages, and can therefore say how much land is about to change hands.

Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service