A greater share of women-only operations are retirement farms

Most farms operated only by women are retirement, off-farm occupation, or low-sales farms, according to findings by researchers with USDA, Economic Research Service (ERS). After examining 2017–20 data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS), researchers found that a greater share of farms operated only by women were retirement farms compared with the shares operated only by men or by men and women jointly, 24 versus 11 and 9 percent, respectively. Retirement farms generate annual gross cash farm income (GCFI) of less than $350,000 with principal operators who report they are retired from farming. Three percent of men-only operations were large family farms (with GCFI of $1 million to $4,999,999), compared to 2 and 0.2 percent of farms operated jointly by men and women, or only women respectively. The ARMS data also show that 7 percent of all farms were operated entirely by women from 2017 to 2020, and 44 percent of all farms were operated jointly by men and women, so 51 percent of all farms had at least one woman operator. For more information, see the ERS report An Overview of Farms Operated by Socially Disadvantaged, Women, and Limited Resource Farmers and Ranchers in the United States, published February 2024.