Most of the U.S. Rented Farmland is Owned by Non-Farmers

(Washington, D.C., March 12, 2026) – Over 2.0 million landowners rented out 348 million acres of farmland, according to the results of the 2024 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey results released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). Of these acres, 79% are owned by non-farming landlords.

 

Non-operating landlords include entities who rent out agricultural land under a variety of ownership arrangements (privately owned, trust, family entity, non-family entity, or other). Of the land rented out by non-operating landlords, over 251 million acres were rented out by private landowners, trusts, or family entities.

                                                                                                                 

According to the survey results, rented farmland acres, combined with buildings on this land, are valued at more than $1.6 trillion. In 2024, landlords combined received $34.1 billion in rental income while incurring $12.0 billion in total operating expenses.

 

“About 5% of the nearly 900 million U.S. farmland acres, or about 43 million acres, is slated for ownership transfer in the next five years, not including farmland that is in or is expected to be put into wills or trusts,” said Joseph L. Parsons, NASS Administrator.

 

Only 23 million acres of land are expected to be sold to a non-relative, while 20 million acres are expected to be sold to a relative or given as a gift. This means that only a small percentage of farmland will be available for purchase.

 

TOTAL also provides a glimpse into demographic information for 1.8 million non-farming entities, also known as principal landlords. According to the findings, the average age of these landlords is 69.2 years old. This age exceeds that of the average farmer, who is 58.1 years old, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture. Only 12% of all principal landlords were under 55 years old. Nearly 52% of all the principal landlords have never farmed.

 

“As the only source of detailed information on agricultural land ownership characteristics and economic data, TOTAL provides important statistics to government, academia, the farming industry, and others regarding agricultural land ownership for planning, policymaking, research, and market analysis,” said Parsons.

To access the complete 2024 TOTAL results, in addition to key data highlights, methodology, and Frequently Asked Questions, visit  https://www.nass.usda.gov/Surveys/Guide_to_NASS_Surveys/TOTAL or the Quick Stats database at http://quickstats.nass.usda.gov.

###

NASS is the federal statistical agency responsible for producing official data about U.S. agriculture and is committed to providing timely, accurate, and useful statistics in service to U.S. agriculture.

 

 

NCLA Asks Court to End USDA’s Illegal Rule Mandating Electronic ID Eartags for Cattle and Bison

Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America, et al. v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Sec’y Brooke Rollins, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Administrator Michael Watson

Washington, DC (March 5, 2026) – The New Civil Liberties Alliance asked the U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota for summary judgment today in R-CALF USA, et al. v. USDA. Representing ranchers, farmers, and livestock producers, NCLA urges the court to vacate an unlawful rule promulgated by USDA and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) that requires electronic identification (EID) eartags for certain cattle and bison transported across state lines, in place of long-used visual tags. The court should end this unauthorized, expensive mandate that USDA instituted in 2024 to replace an already efficient means of cattle identification without explaining why the expensive change is needed nor how it will help reduce animal disease.

After previously agreeing that visual-only eartags were effective in tracing disease in cattle and bison and letting producers choose between visual-only and electronically readable options, USDA changed its mind with this 2024 rule. USDA now says EID tags and electronic records are significantly better for disease tracing, without giving any reasoning or data to support that claim. USDA has not done anything to address alleged problems it claims to have found with visual tag- based tracing. The current rule does not require producers to buy or use electronic eartag readers, so they use the EID tags to track cattle the same way they previously used the far less expensive visual-only tags. This means American ranchers are simply paying more to do what they have done for decades to effectively track and prevent livestock disease.

The unreasonable EID rule says EID eartags are necessary to reduce transcription errors in livestock tracking records due to “human error,” but it also permits EID eartags to be used the same way as visual-only tags. This sort of internal inconsistency is arbitrary and capricious. Having never reasonably justified the EID tag mandate in the first place, USDA also failed to consider the alternative of requiring readability standards for visual-only tags instead. Each of these problems violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

NCLA released the following statements:

“USDA’s EID eartag mandate is a costly solution in search of a nonexistent problem. America’s ranchers and farmers have long used visual-only identification for disease tracing, and this Rule does not change that option. It just makes that process much more expensive.”

— Kara Rollins, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

“The authority behind this regulation is ‘all hat and no cattle.’ The agency has no evidence it will stop, or even help slow, the spread of cattle disease that would support its enormous expense.”

— John Vecchione, Senior Litigation Counsel, NCLA

 

For more information visit the case page here.

 

ABOUT NCLA

 

NCLA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights group founded by prominent legal scholar Philip Hamburger to protect constitutional freedoms from violations by the Administrative State. NCLA’s public-interest litigation and other pro bono advocacy strive to tame the unlawful power of state and federal agencies and to foster a new civil liberties movement that will help restore Americans’ fundamental rights.