A Key Agriculture Census Doesn’t Reflect Reality, Researcher Warns
September 24, 2025 | Source: Civil Eats | by Rebekah Alvey
To paint a picture of farming in the nation, agriculture groups and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) use the Census of Agriculture, undertaken every five years by the agency’s National Agricultural Statistics Services. But University of Iowa researcher Silvia Secchi argues that the image is not a full or accurate representation.
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.