Wow. I couldn’t believe the headline in the Muncie Star Press.
Here it is in black and white:
The number of Indiana farms smaller than 10 acres increased from 5,436 in 2002 to 9,720 in 2007.
Many of these new farmers hold full-time jobs outside of agriculture and run small farms while off the clock.
But just as small-scale farms are on the rise, so are large scale farms. In 2002, there were 990 Indiana farms with more than 2,000 acres. By 2007, that number rose to 1,285.
This story in the Journal Gazette, “Cash Crop: Industry shifting toward large, million-dollar farms,” paints a stark picture of the large getting larger.
The losers? Mid-sized farms.
“It’s just like all the other politics in the world,” the Star Press quotes Greg Preston, Indiana director of agriculture statistics. “The middle class or the middle-size farmers seem to be the ones that are shrinking. So you either have to get larger or shrink down.”
As much as I like to see an increase in small farms, it’s not good to see the middle get squeezed.
Virtual Farmgirl 