Where have the small farms gone?

"The American Farm Bureau Federation documents that over 160,000 farms vanished between 2017 and 2024. In 2025 alone, another 15,000 ceased operations—8,000 of them small farms generating between $1,000 and $9,999 annually."

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more They Are Killing the Farmers and Nobody Is Asking Why. John Walter Sep 28   READ IN APP   Editor’s Note What follows is assembled from verified documentation: bankruptcy filings from U.S. federal courts, European Union parliamentary records, United Nations agricultural reports, audio recordings of farmer protests in Brussels and The Hague, and interviews published in agricultural trade publications and regional newspapers between 2024 and 2026. I have confirmed every statistic through primary sources, every quote through multiple recordings, every name through official documents. Some individuals requested anonymity—not from government retribution, but from banks holding their mortgages and corporations controlling their seed supply. Others insisted their names appear in full. They want their testimony preserved. When the Last Tractor Leaves Arkansas: The Reckoning That Farmers from Stuttgart to Brussels Have Been Trying to Warn Us About The Thirty-Three Bankruptcies That Led the Nation in a Category No One Wants to Claim In February 2026, Arkansas led the United States in agricultural bankruptcies. Thirty-three farms filed for Chapter 12 protection in the first twelve weeks of the year—the highest number in Arkansas in the twenty-first century, more than double the previous year’s total. Georgia followed with twenty-seven filings, a 145 percent increase from 2024. Nationally, Chapter 12 farm bankruptcies reached 315, marking a 46 percent increase and the third consecutive year of rising filings. These figures represent only farmers with sufficient assets to require court protection. They exclude the thousands who simply walked away, who sold combines and tractors at auction for scrap value, who woke before dawn one morning and decided never to plant again.  The Colorado River Missed Its Deadline: Fifty Thousand Jobs and the Water That Never Came While Midwestern farmers grappled with fertilizer costs, their counterparts in the American West confronted water scarcity reaching crisis proportions in 2025. The Colorado River Basin, providing water for 5.5 million acres of agricultural land and 40 million people, has been in structural deficit for years. In 2025, negotiators from seven states missed deadlines for establishing new operating guidelines. Agricultural water use accounts for approximately 75 percent of beneficial uses in the Colorado River Basin and about 60 percent of all consumptive uses. In California’s Central Valley, water scarcity has already forced fallowing of hundreds of thousands of acres. The Public Policy Institute of California estimates up to 50,000 jobs could be lost in the Central Valley alone. Imperial Valley farmers, producing two-thirds of U.S. winter vegetables, faced impossible choices. Some sold water rights to urban areas rather than continue farming. Others shifted to less water-intensive crops with lower profit margins, accelerating financial distress... Three and a Half Times Higher: The Suicide Rate That Agricultural Economists Do Not Include in Their Spreadsheets Farmers in the United States die by suicide at rates 3.5 times higher than the national average. The suicide rate in rural America increased 46 percent in recent years. Between April 2024 and March 2025, 259 farm bankruptcies were filed. Each filing represented not merely financial event but psychological trauma... Seventy-Nine Percent Control One Quarter: The Consolidation That Is Not Foreign Ownership But Something More Systematic In 2025, American farms making $1 million or more in annual sales increased by 50, while farms generating $1,000 to $9,999 fell by 8,000. Nearly 79 percent of farms generate under $100,000 in annual sales yet control only about one-quarter of farmland. Millions of acres are now owned by investors who will never set foot on the property. The Union of Concerned Scientists has identified this consolidation—not foreign ownership, which receives disproportionate political attention—as the genuine national security threat... The Warning That Has Been Repeated Since 2024: What They Know and What We Refuse to Hear What emerges from this accumulation of data is systematic destruction unexplained by individual failure. Jose Maria Castilla warned of “crazy laws.” Caroline van der Plas warned that “when the farmers are gone, they are not going to come back.” Florian Poncelet testified to persistence: “We’ve been protesting since 2024.” They are warning anyone who will listen that the system is breaking, that abundance assumed as birthright is conditional and temporary. The skills required to farm well take decades to develop. The knowledge of specific places takes generations to accumulate. Once lost, this human capital cannot be replaced. They are warning us. They have been warning us for years. The question is whether we will listen before the warnings become memories, before the farms become suburbs, before the soil becomes dust, before the hunger becomes our own. ---------------------- Thanks to John Walter's newsletter. I have cut out all the data which refers to European and Indian farmers. It's gruesome reading, and you are welcome to sign up for the newsletter. I found several links required me to subscribe to different sites, which I declined doing. My other concern (minimal in the face of these stats) is the sentence regarding "The suicide rate in rural America increased 46 percent in recent  years." It doesn't say when that percentage is measured from and to.