by Mónica Cordero, Investigate Midwest, Investigate Midwest
July 20, 2026
Beginning farmers are often described as the future of American agriculture. But the 2022 Census of Agriculture shows they are not simply younger versions of today’s farmers. Their age, work patterns and farm characteristics paint a more complicated picture of what it means to start farming in the United States today.
USDA defines a beginning farmer or rancher as someone who has operated a farm or ranch for 10 years or less.
The average age of a beginning farmer in the United States is 47.1 years old, more than a decade younger than the average U.S. farmer. Nearly one-quarter of beginning farmers are under 35, compared with fewer than one in 10 U.S. farmers overall. Beginning farmers are also far less likely to be 65 or older.
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Brooks Lamb, special adviser for strategic communications at American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting farmland and helping farmers gain access to land, said many beginning farmers enter agriculture later in life, often as a second career or retirement vocation, after building savings or financial security elsewhere.
“People who are younger don’t have that economic security, so again it makes it even harder for them to get started,” he said.
Women also make up a larger share of beginning producers than of producers overall. In 2022, women accounted for 41% of beginning producers, compared with 36% of all U.S. producers.
Farms with at least one beginning producer sold $122 billion in agricultural products in 2022, accounting for 23% of all U.S. agricultural sales. Nearly half of those sales came from crops, while livestock, poultry and related products accounted for the rest.
Yet the 2022 Census of Agriculture also suggests that beginning farmers are defined by more than their age. Nearly three-quarters (72%) reported a primary occupation other than farming, compared with 58% of all U.S. producers, and more than half worked off the farm for 200 days or more each year. The figures paint a picture of producers who often balance farming with other jobs as they establish their operations.
Lamb said “affordable land access” may be the biggest barrier to entry. However, it is not the only challenge: beginning farmers still face “market pressures, the high cost of input prices and the inability to often control what price you sell your products at.”
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