Number of farms in New York down for fourth straight year

Farm numbers in New York state dropped for the fourth consecutive year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Stephen Ropel, director of the New York Field Office of the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, said the number of farms for 2007 was estimated at 34,200, a decrease of 800 from 2006. Land in farms held steady at 7.50 million acres, however, raising the average farm size to 219 acres, 5 acres more than the previous year.

Farms with sales of more than $500,000 increased by 50 to 1,350, and farms with sales between $250,000 and $499,999 rose by 150 to 1,750. The area of land operated by farms in these two groups totaled 2.57 million acres, 5 percent more than a year ago.

The next smaller sales class, farms with sales between $100,000 and $249,999, increased by 200 to 3,000, while land operated by these farms dropped by 50,000 acres. Average farm size as a result fell from 446 acres to 400 acres.

There were 11,300 farms with sales between $10,000 and $99,999, compared with 10,700 a year earlier. Land they operated totaled 2.09 million acres.

There were 1,800 fewer small farms with sales between $1,000 and $9,999 in 2007, at 16,800. Land in farms for this class decreased 110,000 acres from the previous year to 1.64 million acres, for

an average farm size of 98 acres.