What farming actually pays
We sell farm-rooted clothing, so we should be able to say what farming earns without flinching. Two federal datasets, and neither of them says what the marketing usually does.
Where these come from.The national figures are USDA’s Agricultural Resource Management Survey, the federal survey of farm finances, for 2023. The Oregon figures are from USDA Economic Research Service geospatial data, drawn from the Censuses of Agriculture for 2012 and 2017.
Two scales, and they are not interchangeable. ARMS surveys 15 states and Oregon is not one of them, so nothing in the national table describes the Willamette Valley specifically. The county data does cover all 36 Oregon counties. Quoting a national survey as though it were local is precisely the move this page exists to avoid.
The county numbers are older than they look. ERS published this service in 2025; the data in it was collected in 2012 and 2017. Publication year and collection year are different things, and only one of them belongs next to a figure.
Most farm households do not live on farming
USDA sorts farm households into three bands. The largest band by a wide margin — 951,734 households — lost money farming in 2023 and was carried entirely by work off the farm.
| Band | Households | From farming | Off-farm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residence farms | 951,734 | −$1,106 | $139,344 |
| Intermediate farms | 674,874 | $1,864 | $76,371 |
| Commercial farms | 196,215 | $321,003 | $110,974 |
Of 1,822,823 farm households, 1,626,608 — 89 percent earn essentially nothing from farming or lose money at it. The remaining 196,215 commercial farms take almost all of the farm income there is.
And it is not a bad year
Household income from farming for that largest band, every year ARMS published it. It was negative in 17 of the 21 years from 2003 to 2023. The best year in two decades was 2019, at $3,037.
- 2003−$3,675
- 2004−$217
- 2005−$1,032
- 2006−$3,459
- 2007−$4,818
- 2008−$5,946
- 2009−$6,790
- 2010−$3,501
- 2011−$4,421
- 2012−$2,891
- 2013−$506
- 2014$1,169
- 2015−$634
- 2016$345
- 2017−$445
- 2018−$2,694
- 2019$3,037
- 2020−$704
- 2021$923
- 2022−$1,296
- 2023−$1,106
Mean household income from farming activities, residence farms. Bars are scaled to ±$7,000 and the centre line is zero.
Oregon lost direct-selling farms while direct sales grew
Between the 2012 and 2017 Censuses of Agriculture — the peak years of farm-to-table as a marketing idea — the number of Oregon farms selling direct to customers fell in 28 of 36 counties, while the dollar value of those sales rose in 26 of 36.
More money, fewer farms. That is consolidation, and it is the opposite of the story the same period was telling about itself. Statewide, 5,720 Oregon farms reported direct sales in 2017.
Steepest falls in the number of farms selling direct
| Harney County | −61% farms | −41% sales |
| Baker County | −56% farms | −4% sales |
| Coos County | −51% farms | −6% sales |
| Curry County | −41% farms | +34% sales |
| Lake County | −40% farms | −85% sales |
| Morrow County | −37% farms | +57% sales |
We are in Lane County, where 444 farms reported direct sales in 2017 — about 17 percent of the county’s farms.
Why we publish this
Because the alternative is to sell agricultural imagery and say nothing about the economics under it. We are an art business in Eugene with agricultural roots, working our way toward farming, and these are the numbers we are working toward. The wartime archive on this site spends four years arguing about whether growing food pays — it is a fair question to ask of the present too.
Notes from Eugene
We're working through the USDA's agricultural record and marking what still holds. Occasional notes from an art business with agricultural roots, working its way toward farming.
We'll email you to confirm before sending anything. After that, occasional seasonal notes from Sun & Rain Works — we won't share your address, and every email has an unsubscribe link.
Sources: USDA Economic Research Service, Agricultural Resource Management Survey, farm operator household income by collapsed farm typology, 2003–2023 (ARMS surveys 15 states; Oregon is not among them). USDA Economic Research Service geospatial services, Food Environment Atlas local-foods layers, from the Censuses of Agriculture for 2012 and 2017. Both are works of the U.S. federal government. Figures are means, and a mean across a highly skewed population describes no individual farm — our reading of them is our own.