The census measures the number of farms and farmers in the United States. It also aims to capture demographic and other information, providing the federal government and the farming community an overview of the sector. Data from the census can be used to shape federal policy, guiding research dollars and other investments.
The document was managed by the Bureau of the Census until 1996, when it was transferred to the USDA. That transition caused an important political shift in how the census was used: The number of farms in each state affected how much government research support and funding that state received, Secchi says.
In a recent paper, “Who is an American farmer? Who counts in American Agriculture?” she argues that the definitions used in the current census, released in 2024, have inflated the number of farms in the country by including private and non-commercial operations. The census fails to capture the level of consolidation happening in the industry, she says, with multiple farms belonging to the same corporation.
Women and farmworkers are also misrepresented in the census, Secchi says, because it does not collect enough information on younger, disadvantaged farmers who may benefit from improved federal policies, safety nets, and support.
Civil Eats recently spoke to Secchi, a professor in the university’s School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability, for a discussion on the importance of understanding who counts as a farmer in U.S. agriculture.
A key part of your paper explores the definition of “farm” used in the census and how that has evolved over the years. Since 1974, the census has defined a farm by its potential to sell $1,000 or more of agricultural products, but as you’ve noted, it does not distinguish “lifestyle” farms that are more on the hobby level and may occasionally exceed the minimum sales figure. Can you comment on that?
There is this tension between the people who farm as a lifestyle and the people who want to farm commercially. Maybe the lifestyle farmers can’t make enough money to fully sustain themselves as farmers, but that’s what they would like to do, if they could. But basically, from 1974 the definition has not changed, so it does include [these private and non-commercial operations]. The definition is almost as old as I am. Which is kind of mind boggling to me.
In 1996, the census moved from the Bureau of the Census to the USDA. Can you explain what prompted that change and why that may have been a significant moment?
There was actually a kerfuffle, because Congress wanted to cut funding for the Census of Agriculture, using the same definition for a farm that we’re using today. And the Bureau of the Census said, if you cut this the funding, we’re gonna up that threshold [for the definition of a “farm”] to $10,000—and that caused a lot of consternation in Congress.
So they gave the census to the USDA, which is seen as a more friendly-to-agriculture type of agency. [The agency] has an incentive to inflate the number of farms, because that’s their constituency. The bigger your constituency, the more political power you have.
In certain states, the number of very, very small farms is very, very large. If you change the definition, those states would lose a large percentage of their farm population and therefore a portion of their funds. So you can see that there are political reasons why the census definitions are the way they are.
