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Pennsylvania has fewer farms than it once did, but the average farm is getting larger — a shift occurring amid rising operating costs, shrinking profit margins and an aging generation of farmers struggling to find successors.
Next to the office holding freezers full of lamb and beef on Tall Pines Farms, farmer Glenn Wagoner, pointed to a 1988 Ford TW 25 tractor, used to haul equipment to make hay and spread manure. They use older machinery because new tractors are too expensive.
"The equivalent today for that is a quarter of a million dollars,” he said. “Now, you just can't make your money back. There's just no way you can sell that many cows, and so, what do they do?”
Since 2016, the number of farms statewide has dropped by almost 17%, according to data from the United States Department of Agriculture. In that same period, the acre per farm has increased by 7%.
Rachel Wagoner raises beef cattle and sheep on Tall Pines farms, a family-owned business located in Darlington Township, Beaver County. She married into it through her husband, Chris Wagoner, who is a fourth-generation farmer; Glenn Wagoner is his father.
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Rachel is also an editor of Farm and Dairy, a publication focused on the farming industry.
Families leave farming because it's difficult, economically and physically, she said
When a farm is multi-generational, there is a lot of emotional attachment, she added.
Even though a farmer’s main assets lie in their animals, equipment, and land equity, that person doesn't want to sell and be the one to "mess it all up,” Rachel said.
The average age of all producers in Pennsylvania is 55.4 years old according to the 2022 census of agriculture data.
"If your kids don't want to be in it, then what do you do?” she said. “You sell it to the highest bidder, because you don't have retirement, because you're a farmer, and you're self-employed, and all of your wealth is wrapped up in the land. And the only way to get something out of that is to sell it. There's like no incentives for people to hand down farms to non-family members.”
Pennsylvania Farm Bureau President Tommy Nagle grew up in agriculture but took a different path at first. He was an accountant, and 10 years after graduating from Saint Fransis University, he started buying cows. He quit accounting when the farm was large enough to make it a full-time business.
He started with barren land from his parents and has since built grain storage and four barns on the property. He's bought two farms and rents around 31 farms.
Between 2018 and 2025, the average size of Pennsylvania farms with annual agricultural sales between $1,000 and $9,999 increased by eight acres, while those with sales between $100,000 and $249,999 grew by 23 acres, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Average farm size, by acreage, declined across the four other sales categories during the same period.
"It’s an economy of scale, and the cost of operation has just gotten so high that unless you were trying to diffuse the cost over many acres, it's just not economical to continue to do anymore,” Nagle said. “It's just cost prohibitive. Equipment costs have really just continued to rise, and input costs, diesel fuel costs.”
He added that there are others who want to get into agriculture but not in a position to do so.
"Could you imagine going to the bank and saying, ‘I want $2 million to start farming?’" he said. “It's not going to happen.
“Agriculture is more of a lifestyle than anything. We don't get paid for the hours we work, and we understand that going into it. But you have to be able to provide a living for your family. When you're talking about taking a several million-dollar loan out to live the lifestyle of the occupation you want to, and you wonder at what point will it be paid for, do you really want to take that risk?”
Nagle said it’s tough to have a return on investment when a new tractor could cost between $100,000 and $500,000, and a small farm might only make $100,000 a year.
Some farms might be getting larger because the more acres someone has, the more profit they can turn with the same equipment. He said that someone who farms a smaller acreage could use the same equipment even if they bought more land.
"You're spreading your cost over 10,000 acres versus 1,000 acres,” he said. “They're definitely able to be a little more profitable or run a tighter margin than what the guy with 1,000 acres is able to."
As a child, Cliff Wallace, board member of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau for Beaver/Lawrence County, said that his father paid all the bills with just 800 laying hens. To make ends meet. Today, a farmer would need hundreds more, he said.
"If you don't have at least 100,000 birds, then what are you doing?" he said. "You know, you're not going to make it. So, the efficiency of size changed it so that you got to be huge in order to survive in poultry. Dairy is squeezing in that direction."
Wallace taught agriculture at the Mohawk Area School District for 35 years and did hoof trimming for dairy herds and show cattle in the area. Now retired; he takes care of his son’s 30 head brood cattle during the day, while his son works a full-time job.
In that time, he watched dairy operations in Lawrence County slowly disappear. Even though it’s difficult, he continues farming because “it’s a way of life.”
"Our family moved here in 1848 and started on that property, we bought two small farms, and by God, we don't want to give it up," Wallace said.
Wallace's father made plans to make sure the farmland was not divided before he died. So, out of four children, he gifted it to Wallace's two brothers, who were still working on the land.
"That type of cooperation in a family is rare,” Wallace said. “So, in most cases, you have a generation where their kids are out, and maybe in other parts of the country, with good careers, and they come to the end of their farming career, and there's nobody to pick it up, and so it's for sale."
Whoever buys the land might continue to use it for farming or something else, like urban development. Nagle said attracting new people to the farming business all comes down to its profitability.
“The way we get more people into agriculture is to make agriculture more profitable,” he said. “I think there's plenty of people that really want to get into agriculture and would like to continue the family farm, but they look at what they can make off the farm.”
To survive in a commodity exchange, where the price that a farmer can sell their goods for is already set, Rachel Wagoner does direct marketing. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she said more people were willing to buy meat locally. So, she started selling pieces individually, instead of selling a whole or half cow to someone.
"It’s more of a pain… to sell a cow 100 different ways than just selling a big cow to one person, but it makes sure that we have cash flow," she said. "We have different ways to sell our animals.
“If I sell from my farm, I get to pick the price. So that's ideally what I want to do."
She added that farms need to look at how to make themselves sustainable. At tall Pines Farms for instance, everything is based on how the grass is growing. They use it to feed their animals during the grazing season and then turn it into hay for winter when things aren't growing.
Rachel said that the last two years of drought have made it really hard. So, in the future she plans on planting more heat-tolerant grasses that won't dry up.
Cassandra Harris is a reporter with the Pittsburgh Media Partnership newsroom. A spring 2026 graduate of Point Park University, Cassandra interned at Pittsburgh Magazine, Pittsburgh Latino Magazine, and The Homepage Newspaper. Reach her at cassandra.harris@pointpark.edu.