Debunking the myth of the small farm
A collaboration between FarmKind and Bryant Research, based on data from the USDA Census of Agriculture. Analysis available here.
Satellite photo of a massive beef farm in Texas. Source here.
When we think about farming..
..the picture that springs to mind is of a few animals grazing peacefully in open fields – it’s wholesome, positive and quintessentially American. But it is also a myth. The reality is that the vast majority of animals raised and profits made flow to megafarms.
This is terrible for consumers, who end up buying products from cruel factory farms rather than farms with more humane practices (which consumers prefer).
It’s terrible for the environment, creating high concentrations of waste that local farmland can’t absorb and process, leading to pollution of surrounding air, land and waterways
It puts our health at risk, with large farms increasing the chances of disease outbreak and the risk of mutation into a human pandemic. Not to mention the health risk incurred by local communities due to pollution, such as respiratory problems and elevated blood pressure.
But the rise of megafarms is also bad for small family farmers who are being pushed out of their industry by corporate megafarms. “Old McDonald had a farm” but he probably doesn’t anymore.
Our analysis of USDA census data from 2022 debunks the myths about the small family farm and where our food really comes from.
Myth 1: “My food doesn’t come from a factory farm”
Most Americans believe that their food doesn’t come from massive factory farms, but rather comes from small bucolic family operations. In fact, a 2017 survey found that 58% of US adults think “most farmed animals are treated well” .
It makes sense that this is the prevailing belief. After all, it’s what we’d all like to believe and it’s the image conjuring by industry marketing. Most of us know about the problems of factory farming, but we assume that those products are being consumed by someone else, rather than us.
USDA census data shows just how improbable this is.
98.1% of US livestock is raised on massive megafarms
While small farms make up the majority of total operations, they produce only a negligible amount of the animal products Americans buy. In contrast, megafarms — some of the largest operations for a given animal product type — produce the vast majority. This means that for the average US consumer of meat, eggs, and dairy, a large portion of these foods comes from megafarms.
Note: For dairy, number of animals raised is used in this table to enable aggregation with other products. In the rest of the analysis, % of dairy sales is used, as this is a better indicator of where Americans’ food comes from.
The following series of maps and tables shows just how much of our food is produced on megafarms:
🥚 Eggs
Takeaways:
When it comes to eggs, there are plenty of small farms, but they produce a negligible amount of the countries eggs;
At the national level 95% of farms have just 1% of the egg-laying hens.
The truth is that the biggest 1% of farms account for 93% of the country’s egg-laying hens.
>75% of egg-laying hens are on mega-farms with >100,000 birds. This massive proportion of the nation’s eggs comes from just 0.1% of total egg farms
It wasn’t always like this: In 1978, just 32% of egg-laying hens were on farms this size
🍗 Chicken
Takeaways:
When it comes to chickens raised for meat (called ‘broilers’ in the industry), the small farm is a myth for a different reason:
Unlike with eggs where the majority of farms are small, factory farming has pushed out small broiler farmers to the point that >43% of farms are the massive kind, each selling >100,000 animals per year
These mega-farms make up 99.6% of total chicken sales
Relative to egg farms, these mega-farms are concentrated in fewer states, with 16 states being home to zero >100,000 bird/yr farms
This concentration isn’t new, but it has gotten worse: In 1978, 82% of meat chickens came from farms this big.
🥓 Pork
Takeaways:
As with the egg industry, there are plenty of small pig farmers, but as with the egg industry, almost all the food comes from the massive ones:
>94.5% of pigs sold come from mega-farms in the USDA’s largest category (>5,000 pigs/yr)
At the national level 80% of farms sell 1% of the pigs
This level of concentration has increased dramatically over the past 30 years. USDA introduced the >5,000 pig/yr category in the 1992 census, at which point just 28% of pigs came from farms this big (less than a third of today).
🍔 Beef
Takeaways:
Beef is less concentrated than other animal farming industries, but nonetheless:
44% of beef cows sold come from mega-farms in the USDA’s largest category (>2,500 cows/yr)
This means that almost half the nation’s beef comes from just 0.4% of farms
Meanwhile roughly 99% of farms contribute less than half the beef
Unlike all the other products we analyzed, beef’s concentration hasn’t changed much over the last 50 years.
🥛 Dairy
Takeaways:
Of the products we analyzed, dairy is the least consolidated. However that still means:
45% of dairy sales (dollar value) come from mega-farms with herds of >2,500 cows (the USDA’s largest category)
Over 90% of farms sell ~1/3 of the milk (to be specific, 91.7% of farms account for 34.1% of sales)
The dairy industry was far less concentrated 50 years ago. The USDA category for farms with >2,500 cows didn’t yet exist. Farms with >500 cows accounted for <9% of dairy sales. Today, this proportion is almost 9x larger, at 77%.
Myth 2: “The industry is made up of small, family farms”
Whilst it’s true that the majority of farming operations are small, the contribution of these farms is so dwarfed by large operations that it doesn’t make sense to characterise the industry as being a small business industry. Whilst the industry likes to use small farms as their public face, the vast majority of the production, the profits and the subsidies are captured by big business.
We are often told that “we need to support the farmers” as a justification for spending billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies for US animal agriculture. However when you consider that subsidies are not shared equally among farms, but rather are spread roughly in proportion to how much they produce, it becomes clear that the sympathetic image of the small family farmer is being used to direct taxpayer money to massive farming corporations.
The following series of maps and tables shows just how unrepresentative small farms are of the industry as a whole: