Agriculture in the United States is constantly changing, and keeping up with those changes is important for anyone involved in the industry. Each year, the USDA’s Economic Research Service (USDA‑ERS) publishes the Farms and Ranches at a Glance report to help show what is happening across U.S. agriculture. The 2025 version of the report was published in February 2026 and provides information on the number of farms and acres in production, farm financial performance, farm household well‑being, and several other major indicators. Last year, I wrote about the 2024 report in a previous post on this blog in two parts: Part One and Part Two. In this post, I take a closer look at the 2025 edition, focusing on how the new data compares with the 2024 report and highlighting any notable trends discussed by the authors. While the report does not focus specifically on Illinois, many of the national changes it describes affect agricultural producers here and across the country.
Farm Typology
Understanding how the USDA defines and classifies farms is the logical place to start when reviewing this report. The definition of a farm has remained largely the same since the 1970s. USDA considers a farm to be “any place that, during a given year, produced and sold (or normally would have produced and sold) at least $1,000 of agricultural products or has government payments and sales that exceed $1,000 (not adjusted for inflation)” (Lacy et al., 2026).
To compare operations of different sizes, USDA groups farms using a classification system based primarily on gross cash farm income (GCFI). GCFI includes cash receipts from crop and livestock sales, farm‑related income, and government program payments before expenses are deducted. The current typology, last updated in 2013, organizes farms into the following categories:
- Small Family Farms (GCFI less than $350,000)
- Retirement Farms: principal operators have retired from farming but still operate at a small scale.
- Off‑Farm Occupation Farms: principal operators have a primary job outside of farming.
- Low‑Sales Farms: GCFI less than $150,000.
- Moderate‑Sales Farms: GCFI between $150,000 and $349,999.
- Midsize Family Farms (GCFI between $350,000 and $999,999)
- Large‑Scale Family Farms (GCFI of $1,000,000 or more)
- Large Farms: GCFI between $1,000,000 and $4,999,999
- Very Large Farms: GCFI of $5,000,000 or more
- Nonfamily Farms: farms where the principal operator and related individuals do not own a majority (50 percent or more) of the business.
The report provides the number of farms in each category and shows how the distribution of farms changed between the 2024 and 2025 editions. The table below summarizes the four main farm categories and the year‑to‑year changes.
Farm Class | Number of Farms | Percent of Farms in the United States | Percent of Acres in Farms |
|---|---|---|---|
Small Family Farms (2025) | 1,309,622 | 86.4% | 40.4% |
Small Family Farms (2024) | 1,626,608 | 86.1% | 40.7% |
Midsize Family Farms (2025) | 113,966 | 6.1% | 18.3% |
Midsize Family Farms (2024) | 112,185 | 5.9% | 18.2% |
Large-Scale Family Farms (2025) | 86,808 | 4.7% | 32.6% |
Large-Scale Family Farms (2024) | 84,029 | 4.5% | 30.7% |
Non-Family Farms (2025) | 52,767 | 2.8% | 8.9% |
Non-Family Farms (2024) | 66,977 | 3.5% | 10.5% |
The report also examines how different farm types contribute to the value of specific commodities. The following table highlights the value of cash grains and soybeans, beef, hogs, and hay produced by each farm class and shows how those values changed since the 2024 report. These are shown in the table below.
Farm Class | 2025 Beef | 2024 Beef | 2025 Cash Grains and Soybeans | 2024 Cash Grains and Soybeans | 2025 Hay | 2024 Hay | 2025 Hogs | 2024 Hogs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Small Family Farms | 24% | 22% | 15% | 14% | 51% | 45% | 22% | 15% |
Midsized Family Farms | 14% | 12% | 25% | 23% | 19% | 18% | 32% | 29% |
Large-Scale Family Farms | 52% | 39% | 51% | 52% | 24% | 30% | 39% | 37% |
Non-Family Farms | 11% | 26% | 9% | 11% | 6% | 8% | 7% | 19% |
Farm Financial Performance
The report uses operating profit margin (OPM)—the share of gross income that remains as profit—as a key measure of financial performance. Farms with an OPM below 10 percent are considered high financial risk. An OPM between 10 and 25 percent indicates medium risk, and an OPM above 25 percent is viewed as low risk.
Across all farm types, 71 percent of operations in the 2025 report fell into the high‑risk category, while 7 percent were in the medium‑risk category and 18 percent were in the low‑risk category. Among small family farms, the share in the high‑risk group remained elevated: 82 percent of low‑sales farms, 75 percent of off‑farm occupation farms, 57 percent of moderate‑sales farms, and 62 percent of retirement farms. These figures closely mirror the previous year’s results, when 84 percent of low‑sales, 71 percent of off‑farm occupation, 66 percent of retirement, and 52 percent of moderate‑sales farms were categorized as high risk.
Midsize family farms also continued to show mixed financial performance. In the 2025 report, 44 percent were in the high‑risk zone, 23 percent in the medium‑risk zone, and 33 percent in the low‑risk zone. In comparison, the 2024 report showed 39 percent in high risk, the same share (23 percent) in medium risk, and a higher share—37 percent—in low risk.
Large‑scale family farms generally reported stronger margins, but still experienced slight year‑over‑year shifts. According to the 2025 report, 36 percent of both large and very large farms were in the high‑risk category. Medium‑risk shares were 25 percent for large farms and 37 percent for very large farms, while both categories had 39 percent of farms in the low‑risk category. In the 2024 report, 34 percent of large farms and 29 percent of very large farms were in high risk, 24 percent and 29 percent were in medium risk, and 42 percent of both groups were in low risk.
Nonfamily farms also saw more operations slip into the high‑risk category. In the 2025 report, 59 percent were classified as high risk, 14 percent as medium risk, and 25 percent as low risk. This compares to 53 percent high risk, 15 percent medium risk, and 28 percent low risk in the 2024 report.
Overall, the 2025 report shows that financial stress remains widespread across most farm types, with only small year‑to‑year shifts in risk levels. Small family farms continue to face the highest likelihood of operating with very thin profit margins, and midsize farms saw a slight increase in their share of high‑risk operations compared to the previous year. Large-scale family farms and nonfamily farms also experienced modest declines in low‑risk status. Taken together, the data indicate that most U.S. farms entered 2024 with limited profitability and ongoing financial vulnerability, reinforcing a trend of tight margins across nearly every segment of the farm sector.
The 2025 Farms and Ranches at a Glance report shows that while the overall structure of U.S. agriculture remains stable, there are ongoing shifts in how different types of farms contribute to production and manage financial risk. Large‑scale farms continue to lead in many major commodities, while small and midsize farms face persistent financial pressure and higher rates of operating risk. This post highlights only a portion of the findings in the full report, which also covers topics such as direct marketing, organic acreage, household income, and other trends that further illustrate the challenges and opportunities facing today’s farm operations.