OPINION: American family farms are disappearing — fast
By Valerie Braylovskiy, Deseret Magazine
According to an opinion piece in Deseret Magazine, American family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate. The U.S. has been losing about 63 farms per day since 2017, totaling more than 162,000 farms and nearly 24 million acres lost in just seven years. Most of those closures involve small family farms, while large operations continue expanding and now produce nearly half of the nation’s food, despite making up less than 4% of farms.
The article argues that federal support programs have increasingly favored large agribusinesses. While small farms make up about half of crop insurance participants, they receive only around 12% of payouts, while medium and large farms collect the vast majority. Bailouts and subsidies, originally designed to stabilize agriculture, have in practice accelerated consolidation by helping larger farms expand and buy out struggling neighbors.
At the same time, farmers face rising pressures from record production costs, trade disruptions, expensive equipment, and volatile global markets. Modern farm machinery, now heavily dependent on proprietary software and repairs, can leave farmers waiting days for technicians and losing thousands in the process.
The result, the author concludes, is a system that works well for large-scale commodity production but increasingly undermines small farms and rural communities. At the current pace of farm losses, the article warns, the United States could see the disappearance of most remaining small and midsize family farms within a few generations.
