DES MOINES — Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig commented on the USDA NASS 2017 Census of Ag report recently released.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Statistics Service released the 2017 Census of Agriculture results sharing a wide range of information about Iowa’s farms and ranches and those who operate them, including new data about on-farm decision making, down to the county level. Information collected directly from producers tells us both farm numbers and land in farms have small percentage declines since the last census in 2012 and the average age of all farmers and ranchers continues to rise.

The census information will be used by farmers, ranchers, local officials, agribusiness, commodity groups and others to guide future decisions in evaluating and implementing policies and to educate consumers, which will provide a return on the investment made by the thousands of farmers who completed their census form.

The 2017 Census of Agriculture data show the following key trends for Iowa:

• There are 86,104 million farms (down 2.9 percent from 2012) with an average size of 355 acres (up 2.9 percent) on 30.6 million acres (down 0.2 percent).

• The value of agricultural products sold by Iowa farmers totaled $29 billion, down 6 percent or $1.87 billion from 2012. Crop sales accounted for $13.8 billion of the total, down 20 percent from 2012, while livestock sales accounted for $15.1 billion, up 12 percent from 2012.

• Iowa ranked 2nd nationally for total value of agricultural products sold and livestock sales in 2017 with Iowa’s crop sales ranking third highest.

• Farmers in Sioux, Lyon, Plymouth, Washington and Kossuth counties had the largest value of sales in Iowa for 2017.

• Farmers spent a total of $23.5 billion on production expenses in 2017, down 1 percent from the $23.7 billion in 2012.

• Farmers harvested crops from 24.3 million acres in 2017 with no-till practices used on 8.2 million acres (up 18 percent from 2012) and reduced (conservation) tillage practices used on 10.1 million acres (up 16 percent).

• Farms with internet access rose from 74 percent in 2012 to 80 percent in 2017.

For the 2017 Census of Agriculture, NASS changed the demographic questions to better represent the roles of all persons involved in on-farm decision making. As a result, in 2017 the number of Iowa producers is up nearly 11 percent to 143,447 because more farms reported multiple producers. Most of these newly identified producers are female. While the number of male producers fell 3.2 percent to 94,382 from 2012 to 2017, the number of female producers increased by nearly 53 percent to 49,065. This change underscores the effectiveness of the questionnaire changes.

• The average age of all Iowa producers is 57.4, up 1.8 years from 2012.

• There are 14,986 young producers age 35 or less on 11,136 farms. Young producers are more involved in making decisions regarding livestock than any other age group.

• Just over one in five producers is a beginning farmer with 10 or fewer years of experience and an average age of 43.7.

• The number of Iowa producers who have served in the military is 12,829 or 9 percent of all producers. They are older than the average at 70.1 years of age.

• Thirty-four percent of all Iowa producers are female with the largest percentage of female producers involved in record keeping and financial management along with day-to-day decisions.

All information is available at www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus.