Losing Organic Farms

January 27, 2026 | Source: Acres USA | by Anneliese Abbott

There were 40,585 fewer acres of certified organic farmland in the United States in 2025 than there were in 2024.

That’s what Mallory Krieger, National Program Director for the Organic Agronomy Training Service (OATS), reported at a National Organic Coalition webinar on January 16, 2026, based on data from the USDA’s Organic Integrity Database (OID). Every year, some new farms are certified organic, while others voluntarily surrender their organic certification status. For the past few years, this has meant that the total number of certified organic farms has not increased much. In some areas, it has actually declined.

While the OID dataset has limitations, it did provide enough information for Krieger to sort the data into geographic regions and see which were losing more farms. Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington, and Minnesota lost the largest number of certified operations between 2024 and 2025, while California, New York, Florida, Missouri, and New Jersey had a net increase in certified operations.

In all states, even those with a net increase, there was a geographic shift in location of operations, with more in metropolitan areas and fewer in rural areas. The general trend seems to be that America’s rural areas are losing certified organic acreage, especially cropland.

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