Post #54356 by PucksFool on the US Policy board

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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.

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