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This is the cover image for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Operations: Characteristics Associated With Business Survival report.

Beginning Farmer and Rancher Operations: Characteristics Associated With Business Survival

  • by Katherine Lacy, Nigel Key, Allison Bauman, Becca B.R. Jablonski and Joleen Hadrich
  • 3/31/2026
  • EIB-294

Overview

Information from the 2022 Census of Agriculture is used to describe the characteristics of farms and ranches with beginning farmers and ranchers (BFRs), operators having no more than 10 years of farming experience. The report presents data for farms where all operators are BFRs; at least one, but not all operators are BFRs; and those operations with no BFRs. For each type of operation, the report compares the characteristics of business operations that survived from 2012 to 2022 to those that did not. The analysis identifies which farm and operator characteristics were correlated with farm business survival over this 10-year period. Results suggest that land tenure arrangements, the use of differentiated markets, crop insurance, and government payments are important correlates with business survival for farms operated by beginning farmers and ranchers.

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