Written by HLRBO Staff|
Last updated
USDA forecast net farm income at $158.4 billion for 2026 on September 3, down $4.3 billion from 2025, and the sector held that line only because direct government payments rose by $19.5 billion. Take the federal money back out and the year looks considerably worse. That is the context a landowner should hold before anyone tells them a hunting lease will fix it.
What USDA released, and what kind of number it is
The Economic Research Service publishes farm sector income and wealth statistics three times a year, and the September 3, 2026 release is the middle one. The $158.4 billion figure for 2026 is a forecast, not a measurement. The 2025 figure it is compared against, $162.7 billion, became an estimate in this same release, after ERS converted last year's forecast using data that has since arrived. The distinction matters because the next revision lands December 2, and the number will move.
Adjusted for inflation, the 2026 forecast is a 5.5 percent decline. Net cash farm income, a narrower measure that counts only market transactions, is forecast at $176.4 billion, up 0.4 percent nominally and down 2.5 percent in real terms. Both measures would still sit above their 20-year averages.
Carrie Litkowski, a Senior Economist and Program Leader in the ERS Resource and Rural Economics Division, presented the update in a webinar that same afternoon. "Much of the expected downward pressure on net farm income in 2026 is being driven by higher production expenses," she said. Total production expenses are forecast at a record $492.8 billion, up 4.5 percent, with fuel and oil up 29 percent and fertilizer up 15.3 percent, as Illinois farm policy analysts summarized the release.
The government payment line, stated plainly
Direct government payments are forecast at $47.4 billion in 2026, an increase of $19.5 billion, or roughly 70 percent. Most of that increase comes from Farm Bill commodity programs, with about $15 billion expected to be paid out under Agricultural Risk Coverage and Price Loss Coverage. Conservation programs add a little over $5 billion.
Litkowski gave the figure that should anchor any conversation about diversification. Counting both direct payments and net federal crop insurance indemnities, she said, "Net income less these payments from the federal government is forecast to fall $34 billion, or 26 percent, from 2025 to 2026." That would put it at its lowest level since 2020.
So the sector's 2026 is not a modest 2.6 percent dip. It is a 26 percent drop in what the market itself produced, papered over by a 70 percent jump in the federal check. That is the honest frame for what follows.
What a hunting lease actually pays
No federal survey tracks hunting lease rates. The Census of Agriculture captures a broader bucket, and the Cash Rents survey captures cropland and pasture, but nothing in the federal statistical system reports what a deer lease goes for in a given county. The best public numbers are scattered state extension surveys, and they are small.
Missouri's is the most usefully specific. MU Extension publication G427, revised August 2024, collected 38 valid hunting lease responses across 29 Missouri counties, mostly in the northern and western parts of the state. The average for a lease covering any wildlife came in at $21.45 per acre, up about 6 percent from $19.70 the year before, and that figure rests on 11 responses. The survey also reports a deer-only average of $23.33 with a first-to-third quartile range of $15 to $40, but that one rests on three responses, which is too thin to carry an argument. Every calculation below uses the $21.45. Treat even that as a signal, not a census.
At the national level the closest federal measure is the 2022 Census of Agriculture, where U.S. farms and ranches reported $1.26 billion in income from agritourism and recreational services, a 12.4 percent real increase over 2017. About 57 percent of counties reported some. That bucket includes corn mazes and trail rides alongside hunting access, so it overstates the hunting piece while understating leases that landowners never reported.
The arithmetic on the same acre
Here is the comparison worth making, because it uses two USDA numbers on the same ground.
ERS forecasts corn cash receipts at $67.3 billion for 2026. NASS's June 30, 2026 Acreage report put corn planted area at 95.3 million acres, the fourth highest since 1944 and down 3 percent from 2025 in the full release. Divide one by the other and corn generated about $706 per planted acre in gross revenue. Against that, Missouri's $21.45 hunting lease average is 3.0 percent. Run it on harvested-for-grain acres instead, 87.4 million, and corn revenue per acre rises to about $770 and the lease share falls to 2.8 percent.
On a 2,000-acre corn operation, that is roughly $1.41 million in gross corn receipts against $42,900 in hunting lease income if every single acre were leased. For that farm, the lease is a rounding error. It will not offset a 29 percent fuel line. It will not substitute for an ARC payment. Anyone who tells a row-crop operator otherwise is selling something.
Two caveats cut in opposite directions. Gross receipts are not margin, and sector-wide ERS forecasts $492.8 billion in expenses against $540.3 billion in receipts, which is about 91 cents of expense for every dollar of sales. Measured against what is left rather than against the top line, lease income looks larger than 3 percent. But lease income is not pure margin either. It carries liability exposure, gate and boundary maintenance, time spent screening and managing hunters, and a tolerance for people being on the place during fieldwork.
Which operations it actually moves
ERS counts nearly two million farms operating just under 900 million acres, and about half of them are residence farms, where the operator is retired or does something else for a living. At the median, farm household income earned on the farm is forecast to stay below zero in 2026. Those households cover living expenses with off-farm wages.
For farm businesses, the larger half, ERS forecasts average net cash farm income of $121,700 in 2026. A quarter section of huntable ground at Missouri's $21.45 comes to $3,432, about 2.8 percent of that average. Meaningful, not transformative.
The ground where the ratio flips is ground that is not producing much else. Mississippi State's winter 2024-25 land values survey reported a statewide average cropland cash rent of $141.47 per acre and a pastureland average of $25.23, with only one respondent in 127 reporting any timberland rental at all. Wherever pasture or timber ground rents in the $10 to $30 range, a hunting lease is not a supplement to the rent. It is comparable to the rent, and on tracts nobody is bidding on, it is the only bid.
Rates and land economics vary enormously by state and county, and neither a Missouri survey nor a Mississippi one settles what a tract in Pennsylvania or Idaho is worth. Wherever you are, the county-level comparison that matters is your own pasture or timber rent against what hunters in your area are paying.
The one thing it does that a commodity check cannot
A hunting lease does not move with corn basis, and it does not depend on whether a price-triggered farm program pays out. The money arrives on a hunting calendar rather than a harvest calendar, usually before the season rather than after it. That is a real property of the income, and it is a different property from size.
It is also not guaranteed. Lease income depends on deer numbers, access quality, road frontage, and whether a hunter's own year went well enough to renew. And it comes with constraints on how you use the ground, plus liability exposure that turns on your state's recreational use statute and on what your insurer will write. HLRBO does not know every state's rule and does not pretend to. Confirm the statute with your state agency and the coverage with your insurer before the first check clears.
The reason to be blunt about the 3 percent is that the 3 percent is not the argument. The argument is that on the acres where corn is not making $706, the lease is the whole return. Landowners weighing that trade can see what comparable ground is listing for and price against it rather than against a neighbor's guess. HLRBO writes up the underlying land economics as the data changes on the HLRBO blog.