Over the last year, I’ve been thinking a lot about the large commercial producer and corresponding ag retail data we’ve been collecting. In fact, my analysis was barely “complete” before stepping on stage at this year’s Ag Retail Association meeting in Salt Lake City. I say “complete” because all good research leads to more questions. Since there wasn’t much time to reflect before presenting, I wanted to share some a few early takeaways here. You’ll continue to see more from our study in the months ahead.

What the 2025 Large Commercial Producer Survey study tells us so far

If you’re new to our Large Commercial Producer (LCP) study, this year we received more than 1,150 responses from Large ($5 million and over), Commercial and Mid-Size farms across the United States. These producers represent nearly every major production category, farming about 6 million acres and raising almost 3 million head of livestock. Now in its eighth iteration over more than 30 years, the study has long focused on corn/soy, wheat, cotton, dairy, beef and hog operations – but this year we also specifically targeted large fruit, nut, vegetable and specialty crops.

What makes this study distinct relative to other research is that it is not about what farmers think about products. Instead, our focus is on how producers make decisions – how they manage farms, how they buy and how today’s major pressures shape those decisions.

A more educated, more complex decision-maker

In every LCP study we’ve conducted, the trend is clear: respondents are increasingly well-educated. While this isn’t a longitudinal cohort, we consistently see more four-year degrees, more advanced degrees and more complex decision process with each iteration. This likely isn’t surprising to most people in the industry, and a simple demographic I suspect few would argue with. Education influences how producers think, plan and evaluate what it will take to continue farming, or in some cases, whether they can.

A notable shift in who expects to stay in farming

In some areas of production categories, up to 9% of farmers say they don’t expect to be farming in five years. Think about that for a minute. That is a meaningful amount of production likely to change hands and not just from “small” operations. Of course, telling us that doesn’t hold them to it. Farming is deeply tied to family and tradition. But that attitude reflects some of the real pressures farmers face: labor constraints, succession challenges, market volatility and more. Many of these challenges will continue to drive consolidation.

What large farms tell us about the future

The prospect of consolidation isn’t a surprise to anyone, but the LCP data helps illuminate how larger farms differ in their decision-making and what that may signal for the broader market. One of our long-standing observations is that the behaviors of today’s largest farms often foreshadow how the rest of the market will act in the years ahead.

Analytical vs. intuitive decision-making

One question we’ve asked in the last few iterations of the study is whether respondents make decisions more analytically or intuitively. In other words, do they use their heads more or their guts more. This type of research tends to skew toward rational self-assessment (“I make decisions analytically”), and larger farms generally lean more analytical. But the pattern varies significantly by production type.

What caught my attention this year was how similar some Mid-Size producers ($350,000-$1 million in gross revenues) are to larger producers in their decision processes. My hypothesis is that some part-time or niche producers, while smaller in size, must make sophisticated decisions to stay viable. It’s one of those questions that lead to another question, and I look forward to exploring it further.

What do analytical producers actually analyze?

Understanding how producers make decisions is very useful. Understanding what inputs they rely on is even more interesting. Among respondents who consider themselves analytical:

  • Some focus on price.
  • Others look at performance.
  • Others describe themselves as analytical yet lean strongly on supplier relationships.

There are some pretty large growers who still rely heavily on intuition and experience to make buying decisions. It’s fair to say that many large growers place more value on supplier relationships than Commercial or Mid-Size growers, which is a reminder that “analytical” does not exclude relational.

More to come

I avoided specific numbers here. We have tons of them and will be sharing those with audiences soon. My hope is that these early reflections give you a sense of the themes emerging from the study and why we believe this work is so important. We’re eager to continue digging into what farmers are telling us, and I hope you’ll follow along as we unpack more of the insights.