2022 Ag Census: Five things to know about Iowa

Iowa’s agriculture industry swells in profits, according to the latest federal data, with more young producers, larger hog confinements and doubling sales of organics emerging in 2022 data.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Census of Agriculture comes around every five years to keep tabs on farm demographics, farm production, crop costs and more across the nation. The census is just a snapshot of Iowa’s agriculture at a certain point in time, so following long-term trends is key, experts told The Gazette. Some of the data is also self-reported.

The Gazette sifted through dozens of data tables and interviewed several experts to uncover interesting developments in Iowa’s agricultural industry. Here are the top five insights:

Younger farmers growing

The age of the average farmer has seemed to stabilize in Iowa, said Iowa State University agricultural economist Chad Hart. Between 2017 and 2022, the average producer age in the state only grew two-tenths of a point to 57.6 years old.

Every age group of producers under 45 saw spikes their numbers. Notably, Iowa sported a 19.4 percent surge among producers under 35, following only New Jersey and Rhode Island nationwide.

“That tells us that this worry about farm transition is already occurring,” Hart said, “and we are seeing some of this land transition from the older generation to the younger ones.”

However, the older generation still owns two-thirds of Iowa’s land, said Wendong Zhang, an assistant professor of economics at Cornell University who used to lead the Iowa Land Value Survey and the Iowa Farmland Ownership and Tenure Survey.

Much of that farmland likely will be passed on along family lines, leaving land access barriers for others entering the industry, especially as land values creep higher.

“There's a dichotomy regarding which metric you look at,” Zhang said. “There's a very significant presence of young and new and beginning producers across the nation. However, if you're looking at the land access and landholding that they have, I don't think that you see a whole lot of action there.”

Farm incomes, expenses rising

The estimated market value of the average farm in Iowa was about $3.2 million in 2022 — the highest it has ever been, according to USDA census data.

The market value of Iowa’s sold agricultural products also peaked at about $44 billion, or about $506,000 per average Iowa farm. Corn sales jumped from $8.5 billion in 2017 to $15.8 billion in 2022. Poultry and egg values increased by a third in that time frame.

Farm expenses spiked in Iowa, too, surging 34 percent from 2017 to surpass $31 billion in 2022. Feed and fertilizer prices rose 44 percent and 72 percent respectively, reflecting challenges producers have reported in Eastern Iowa. Fuel and labor costs swelled as well.

Between their profits and costs, Iowa producers as a whole still made out well in 2022: Their net cash farm income of operations and producers, which include government payments, both nearly doubled from 2017.

“Based on that, you could argue that ag had a good five years. We had a lot of gain,” Hart said. “That's not to say that farming is going to continue to look more profitable as we look further out. This just happens to be the comparison of these two years.”

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Growing conservation efforts

Iowa farmers reported growing 1.2 million acres of cover crops in 2022, a more than twofold increase in 10 years.

It’s a big bump for the offseason crops that reduce erosion and fertilizer runoff, but it’s still less than 5 percent of the state’s total farmed acres.

“We've got to celebrate we're going in the right direction,” said Shaffer Ridgeway, a district conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Black Hawk County. But if Iowa and other Midwest states are going to meet goals for reducing nutrient runoff going into the Mississippi River, “we’ve got to go at a faster pace.”

Farmers who find success with cover crops know they may need to adjust their strategy every year, depending on weather and soil moisture, Ridgeway said. While letting cereal rye and oats grow later in the spring brings more soil benefits, it’s not the right approach in years of drought.

“In 2024, I'm saying to our producers ‘not over 6 inches,’” Ridgeway said of the plant’s height.

Because parts of Iowa have experienced drought in recent years, Shaffer isn’t surprised to see a 50-plus percent increase in irrigated acres in Iowa from 2012 to 2022, according to the census.

Farm consolidation continues

The average U.S. farm grew larger by 22 acres between 2017 and 2022. The average Iowa farm, however, shrank by 10 acres — a small change, but one that defies years of farm consolidation. The typical Iowa farm was 20 acres smaller in 2002 than it was in 2022.

Hart blames it on the “disappearing middle”: Generally, Iowa has seen an increase in the number of small farms between 10 and 500 acres, along with farms larger than 2,000 acres. But the number of mid-sized farms — those between 500 and 2,000 acres — shrank.

“Those mid-sized farms, they're transitioning one way or the other,” Hart said.

The largest farms, though, continue to grow, Zhang noted. The largest farms of 2,000 acres or more now account for 7.5 million acres in Iowa, up 27 percent from 2017.

More hogs, larger hog farms

The number of hogs in Iowa increased 3.3 million between 2012 and 2022, or about 16.4 percent. Yet Iowa has about 1,000 fewer hog farms than 10 years ago, the census reported.

This means the average number of hogs per farm in Iowa in 2022 was nearly 40 percent higher than in 2012.

“Iowa produces more hogs than any other state and certain parts of Iowa have farm upon farm upon farm,” said Amanda Starbuck, research director for Food & Water Watch, an anti-corporate farming advocacy group. “That becomes a big issue with water quality and soil quality. They produce more manure than can be sustainably recycled on nearby land.”

Livestock operations across the United States produced 940 billion pounds of manure in 2022, which is 52 billion pounds more than in 2017, Food & Water Watch reported. To get these numbers, the group used the livestock data reported in the 2022 census and multiplied by estimates of annual manure production by those types of animals.

Iowa farmers reported applying slightly less manure and commercial fertilizer in 2022 than in 2017, census data show.

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Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com