E-mail: nass-ny@nass.usda.gov
(518) 457-5570

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:  William Blackson
Tuesday, February 15, 2011

www.nass.usda.gov/ny



                        NEW YORK FARM NUMBERS DECREASE

The number of farms in New York for 2010 decreased from a year earlier, reports King 
Whetstone, Director of USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, New York Field Office. 
The number of farms for 2010 is estimated at 36,300.  Land in farms was 7.00 million acres.  
Farms with sales over $500,000 decreased by 250 to 1,750 while farms with sales between 
$250,000 and $499,999 fell by 150 to 1,450.  The area of land operated by farms in these two 
groups totaled 2.50 million acres, 12 percent below a year ago.  The next smaller sales class, 
farms with sales between $100,000 and $249,999 increased by 200 to 3,400 while land operated 
by these farms increased to 1.20 million acres. There were 10,700 farms with sales between 
$10,000 and $99,999 compared with 10,900 a year earlier.  Land they operated totaled 1.70 
million acres.  There were 100 more small farms with sales between $1,000 and $9,999 in 2010, 
at 19,000.  Land in farms for this class increased 100,000 acres from the previous year to 1.60 
million acres.  

The number of farms in the United States in 2010 is estimated at 2.2 million, virtually unchanged 
from 2009.  Total land in farms, at 920.0 million acres, increased 100 thousand acres from 2009.  
The average farm size is 418 acres, unchanged from the previous year.

Farm numbers and land in farms are broken down into five economic sales classes.  Farms and 
ranches are classified into these "sales classes" by summing their sales of agricultural products 
and government program payments.  Sales class breaks occur at $10,000, $100,000, $250,000, 
and $500,000.

Farm numbers increased slightly in the $1,000-$9,999 and $500,000 and over sales classes.  
Higher commodity prices and larger value of sales contributed to changes in the number of 
farms within these sales classes.  Farm numbers increased 0.1 percent, to 1.23 million farms, 
in the $1,000 - $9,999 sales class.  Meanwhile, the number of farms in the $500,000 and over 
sales class increased by 1.6 percent, to 126,720 farms.

Land in farms increased in the largest sales class while decreasing in all other sales classes.  
Land operated by farms in the $500,000 & over sales class increased 3.0 percent, to 298.9 
million acres.  Land operated by farms with $1,000-$9,999 in sales decreased by 0.6 percent, to 
105.0 million acres. 


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2-15-11