The Average Income Of American Farmers In 2025 Will Make You Pause

The median farm household income is forecast to be $106,276 in 2025, but most of that will not come from actual farming. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, median farm income across the United States is expected to be -$328 in 2025, which is still higher than the -$651 farmers were expected to have made in 2024. In terms of hard statistics, the latest figures the USDA released, as of May 2025, are from 2023 when the median farm household income was $97,984, most of that money ($79,900) was from off-farm income (other jobs, Social Security, investments, etc.) while income from farming was -$900.

Part of the reason for this farm income loss is that property depreciation can be included as an expense in income taxes, which is also a tax deduction that non-farmers might be able to claim if they work from home. However, running a farm has a lot of risk, and profits tend to fluctuate so much so that the USDA believes that farm household income volatility exceeds every other kind of U.S. household. Plus, that volatility is likely to continue to grow as nations across the globe enact retaliatory tariffs on American farmers, in response to Trump's tariffs on foreign agricultural goods.

The 2023-2025 years were not unusual. The USDA reported that living expenses, production costs, and debt obligations exceeded agricultural income for average farm households in nine of the 10 years between 2010 and 2020, according to Emory University. Meanwhile, the number of farms in the U.S. dropped from 6.8 million in 1935 to just 1.88 million in 2024, according to another USDA study, while farm land shrank from 900 million acres in 2017 to just 876 million in 2024. 

These contractions were due to increased non-farm related job opportunities, as well as tech advancements that have made smaller amounts of land more productive. Indeed, 4% of farm land owned by large-scale family operations (farms that made at least $1 million in gross farm annual income) accounted for 48% of the value of agricultural output, according to the USDA. Yet 86% of U.S. farms make less than $350,000 annually and, as of 2023, the median non-farm income for these smaller farms was at least -$1,900.

Although the USDA projected farm income to increase in 2025, a report from the University of Arkansas System's Division of Agriculture found that more farm owners filed for bankruptcy in the first quarter of 2025 than in Q1 2024. Plus, farmers are being hammered by higher costs, thanks in part to Trump's trade war. And while some grocery prices have skyrocketed, according to new inflation data commodity prices for farmers have dropped to 2018 and 2019 levels.