Be kinde to folk. This changeth the whole habitat.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 3
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/460046/usda-cen...
How many farms are there in the US, really?
The US Department of Agriculture defines a farm as “any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year.” When the USDA conducted its last farm census in 2022, it counted 1.9 million farms.
But “normally would have been sold” is doing a lot of work here.
A property can be counted as a farm if it makes $1,000 or more, but if it doesn’t — or even makes zero dollars in sales — it can still be counted as a farm if it earns enough “points.” The agency has a system that gives landowners a certain amount of points based on factors like acreage or number of animals to estimate how much money they could make in theory. The original intent of the point system, which was introduced in the 1970s, was to capture actual farms that just had a bad year due to weather, crop diseases, or other problems. But it’s expanded to even include “some small acreages and homes, such as a large yard in a subdivision,” according to the Texas Farm Bureau, “despite having no agricultural production.”
It’s like saying that because I have a laptop and a strong wifi connection, I could, in theory, develop software even though I’ve never written nor intend to ever write a line of code.
No. of Recommendations: 3
The US Department of Agriculture defines a farm as “any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year.” When the USDA conducted its last farm census in 2022, it counted 1.9 million farms.
This definition seems silly to me. If I, as a lone gardener, manage to sell $1000 worth of vegetables during the summer to my neighbors, I'm a "farmer"? That's absurd!
No. of Recommendations: 1
I am pretty sure that I am one of those farmers. About 15 years ago, a friend of ours who happened to be the county auditor, told us we should have a timber plan done for our 40 acres of woods to get a property tax break. We never planned on harvesting any timber because our acreage is our and our dogs' playground. We did have a salvage timber operation done in 2017 and are doing one again this year due to storm damage that made parts of our woods unsafe. So I guess we are farmers.
No. of Recommendations: 1
There's a house that's a farm in San Fran. It does square inch farming and appears to make more than $1,000 a year. I think there are more of those than I know. There's some tax break limit tied to 20,000 acres that causes Agra Corps to Incorporate each 20,000 acre parcel they own to take advantage of, so I think it's highly possible.
No. of Recommendations: 1
I am pretty sure that I am one of those farmers.
My parents were (sort of) timber farmers. They bought a parcel of land grown for lumber production that was managed by the forest service. So, every trip to the cabin could also be a "visit to the farm" to check on it--and thus tax deductible. They eventually sold that land. It had a bit of march on it, and he found some relatively hard-to-find wood growing at the marsh edges, so he cut them down and some were made into nice walking staves.
