Farms and Farm Size
Number of farms: 92,856
Acres of Farmland: 30,747,550
Number of farms that grow crops: 63,672
Harvested acres: 23,799,380 acres
Average acres of cropland per farm: 373.8
As usual, there are many small farms that collectively don't farm much of the land and fewer large farms that farm a large percent of the land. In the following calculations, I used the numbers for farms with cropland, and cropland harvested.
- Farms with 500 to 900 acres account for 17.9% of all of Iowa's farms... but have 28.7% of the cropland.
- Farms with 1000 to 1999 acres account for 9.1% of Iowa's farms but 28.9% of the cropland.
- Farms with over 2000 acres account for 2.4% of Iowa's farms but 16.8% of the cropland.
- Together, farms over 500 acres make up 29.4% of Iowa's farms and 74.4% of the cropland.
Hogs
Iowa is home to quite a lot of corn, soy, and hogs. In fact, there are 1171 farms with over 1000 hogs in Iowa. On average, they each have 15,319 hogs. In total, there are 19,295,092 hogs in the state of Iowa. (There are also 3,982,344 cows.)
Egg Production
Iowa is the nation's top producer of eggs. In Iowa, 2966 farms have a total of 53,793,712 laying hens (with an average of 18,137 hens per farm). The vast majority of these farms (2403) have less than 50 hens. Then there's the 41 operations with over 100,000 hens...
Corn
In 2007, Iowa grew corn for grain (as opposed to silage) on 50,095 farms. That means that 78.7% of all Iowa farms grew at least some corn. Of these farms, 2079 grew over 1000 acres of corn. In 2007, Iowa accounted for 16% of all U.S. acres growing corn (for grain, not silage).
- Corn for Grain:
- Acres of corn for grain: 13,842,282
- Average acres of corn per farm: 276.3 acres
- Average yield: 165 bushels per acre
- Corn for Silage:
- Acres of corn for silage: 220,646
- Average acres of corn per farm: 44.4 acres
- Average yield: 18.6 tons per acre
- All corn:
- 14,062,928 acres of corn harvested in 2007
- 59% of all Iowa cropland was in corn.
Soybeans
Then there's the other big crop, soybeans. Some 41,524 farms grew soybeans (65.2% of all Iowa farms) and on average, each farm grew 207.4 acres of soybeans. Iowa grew soybeans on a total of 8612810 acres, or 36.2% of the state's total cropland. The average yield was 50 bushels per acre. Iowa makes up 13.5% of all U.S. acres harvested of soybeans in 2007.
95.3% of Iowa cropland that was harvested in 2007 was planted in corn and soybeans.
Equipment and Machinery
- Average value of farm equipment and machinery: $136,771
- Farms with $200k-$499k in equip & machinery: 14,057 farms (15.1% of farms)
- Farms with Over $500k in equip & machinery: 5700 farms (6.1% of farms)
- Farms with trucks (including pickups): 76,220 (82.1% of farms)
- Farms with Tractors: 79,320 (85.4% of farms)
- Average number of tractors per farm: 3
- Farms with Tractors 40 to 99 horsepower: 54,921 (59.1% of farms)
- Farms with Tractors over 100 horsepower: 47,544 farms (51% of farms)
- Farms with Grain & Bean Combines: 33,875 (36.5% of farms)
- Farms with Hay Balers: 22,104 (23.8% of farms)
Furthermore, I looked at how much of this equipment was new (i.e. purchased after 2003).
- 22% of trucks were new (34.7% of farms bought new trucks)
- 8.2% of tractors were new (16.8% of farms bought new tractors)
- 5% of tractors 40 to 99 horsepower were new.
- 11.8% of tractors over 100 horsepower were new.
- 16.3% of grain and bean combines were new
- 10.2% of hay balers were new.
Chemicals Applied
- Farms that applied commercial fertilizer to cropland: 53,790 (84.5% of farms)
- Acres of cropland (not pasture) treated with fertilizer: 18,414,106 (77.4% of acres)
- Farms that applied manure: 21,877
- Acres treated with manure: 2,311,503
- Farms that applied insecticide: 29,357
- Acres treated with insecticide: 7,703,762
- Farms that applied herbicide: 47,451
- Acres treated with herbicide: 19,289,715
- Farms that applied pesticide for nematodes: 3546
- Acres treated for nematodes: 671,571
- Farms that reported diseases in crops and orchards: 3909
- Acres treated for diseases (I assume this means fungicides): 864,595
Organics
And last and probably least too (in Iowa, anyway): There were a whopping 566 organic farms in Iowa (0.6% of all farms) with a total of 72,394 acres. The organic farms had, on average, 127.9 acres each. |
