AgribusinessLabour takes 40 cents of every dollar on US specialty crop farms
Fruit, vegetable and nursery growers spend nearly three times the American average on labour, while corn farms spend 4 percent of their cash expenses on it.
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Agribusiness
AgribusinessNew American farmers start on smaller land and lower income
Fifty-eight percent of farms run entirely by beginning operators worked 49 acres or fewer in 2022, against 38 percent of established farms.
FruitsUS pistachio harvest sets a record at 1.58 billion pounds
The 2025 American pistachio crop was the largest ever, and for the first time the nut was eaten more widely at home than walnuts or pecans.
AgribusinessLarge family farms produce most of America's farm value
Large-scale family farms produced 73 percent of US dairy value in 2024, while small family farms still led hay and held a third of poultry and eggs.
EnvironmentUS irrigated land stops growing as water use per acre falls
American irrigated area grew more than tenfold from 1890 but has stalled since 1997, even as the water applied to each acre has fallen sharply.
AgribusinessAmerican honey demand doubles, and imports now supply 78 percent
Per capita honey consumption in the United States has nearly doubled since 1990, and more than three-quarters of the supply now comes from abroad.
EnvironmentErosion and water quality draw the most advice to US farms
Just over a third of American crop acres troubled by water-driven erosion received technical help, more than for any other resource problem.
AgrotechRobotic milking lifts dairy returns by $3.15 per hundredweight
USDA economists find American dairies that installed robotic milking earned materially more per hundredweight of milk than those that did not.
CropsUS field crop area set to shrink 2.4 percent by 2035
USDA's long-term projections show the eight major American row crops losing six million acres over the next decade as tight margins persist.
LivestockFewer farms, more milk: how scale rebuilt US dairy
American milk output rose 32 percent in two decades while the number of licensed dairy herds fell by almost two-thirds, USDA researchers find.