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The government’s latest Census of Agriculture for Kansas shows the number of farms in the state has dropped 5% from the count taken five years earlier.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service reported Thursday that there were 58,569 farms in Kansas during 2017. They covered some 45.8 million acres, down 1% from the 2012 census. Farms comprise 87.5% of total land in Kansas.
Kansas farms averaged 781 acres, about 34 acres larger than when the agency counted five years ago.
Kansas producers sold $18.8 billion of agricultural products in 2017, up 2% from 2012. About 66% of those products came from livestock and 34% from crops.
Average net farm income was $49,291 in 2017, down 3% from 2012.
The government’s agricultural census is conducted every five years.
The reduction in the number of farms spans is not just occurring in Kansas. The census shows the number of farms and ranches across the U.S. has fallen but the remaining operations are larger and are responsible for a higher percentage of agricultural sales.
The census shows there were 2.04 million farms and ranches in 2017, down 3.2 percent from 2012. The average size of those operations was 441 acres, an increase of 1.6 percent.
About 75 percent of all sales came from only 105,453 of those farms, down more than 14,000 from 2012.
The average age of producers was 57.5.