The Charlotte region lost 760 farms between 2017 and 2022 — roughly one farm disappearing for every 13 that remained in operation — as booming population growth pushed subdivisions and data centers deeper into the counties that once fed the city. Mecklenburg County alone shed 51 farms, falling from 216 to 165, while land values there climbed so high that commercial operators are cashing out entirely.
That's the picture painted by a new report from the Charlotte Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research center at UNC Charlotte, titled “Fewer Farms, Bigger Stakes.” As reported by the Charlotte Observer, the study is based on USDA Census of Agriculture data and was authored by Kailas Venkitasubramanian, the institute's director of research analytics, with contributions from Caitlin McGlade. Venkitasubramanian said the region's land is being converted to subdivisions and that the loss is irreplaceable, according to the Observer's report.
The numbers behind that warning are stark. The Charlotte region still counted 8,936 active farms as of the most recent census, but that reflects an 8% decline overall. Gaston County saw the sharpest drop, losing 21.1% of its farms — falling from 522 to 412 — while Cleveland County lost 13.2% of its operations, the same report notes.
Mecklenburg's Land Values Push Out Working Farms
Mecklenburg County now has the region's second-highest value of land and buildings per farm, with commercial operations exiting as land values reached $1.2 million per farm, per the same account. In their place, the county is seeing a trend toward small hobby farms rather than the commercial operations that once dominated its rural edges.
The pattern looks different elsewhere in the region. Union County has the largest average farm size at about 240 acres, but the same report found large corporate-owned agricultural operations there are absorbing land from mid-sized farmers — a dynamic also documented in neighboring Gaston County. Anson County, meanwhile, has increased its share of farms earning more than $250,000 in annual sales, driven by row-crop operations and contract poultry production that give it nearly $1.2 million in average sales per farm, even as the county remains one of the region's most economically distressed areas.
South Carolina counties in the metro tell a split story. York County devotes around 40% of its total county area to farming but is losing farms and shrinking in average farm size, the report found. Chester County has moved the opposite direction, adding farms through grazing and hay operations on inexpensive land.
Union and Iredell Rank Among the Nation's Most Threatened
The stakes extend well beyond the current count of farms. Union County ranks among the nation's top 50 counties for projected future farmland loss, and both Union and Iredell counties are considered among the nation's most threatened counties for future farmland loss, according to the same report. A separate American Farmland Trust projection model, analyzed in the Charlotte Urban Institute's research, ranked Union County 23rd and Iredell County 38th nationwide among all U.S. counties at greatest risk for projected farmland loss.
Iredell County's exposure isn't hypothetical. In September 2025, the Statesville City Council voted unanimously to conditionally rezone 330 acres along Stamey Farm Road for a $1 billion Compass Datacenters campus spanning five buildings and more than 1.3 million square feet, a project detailed by Baxtel that required city annexation to secure municipal water and sewer service. The rezoning moved forward despite community pushback over land conversion and utility infrastructure.
The growth pressure driving these decisions isn't slowing down. Charlotte has a population near 1 million people, and the region added nearly 50,000 residents in the year ending July 2025 — more new residents than any other U.S. city added in that span, per the Observer's reporting. Farmers across the region are contending with succession challenges and high land costs simultaneously, a combination the report suggests is squeezing both retiring landowners and the next generation trying to get into farming.
A Statewide Pattern With National Roots
North Carolina's farmland losses aren't confined to Charlotte's suburbs. The state is projected to lose more farmland to development by 2040 than every state except Texas, according to the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which puts the projected loss between 1.1 million and 1.6 million acres. The state already holds 8.1 million acres of farmland today, down from 8.4 million in 2017.
Between 2001 and 2016, 78% of North Carolina's converted agricultural land — 571,700 acres — was developed into low-density residential housing, the highest conversion rate to large-lot suburban sprawl in the country, the state agriculture department found. That kind of sprawl fragments farm parcels so severely that they stop being viable for commercial agriculture even when small pieces remain undeveloped.
The 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture found the national farm count fell below 2 million for the first time in modern history, while the average American farmer's age climbed to 58.1 years, according to the USDA Economic Research Service. Locally, the average farmer was 59 years old in 2022 — nearly identical to the national figure, and a marker of just how close the region's farming population is to retirement without clear succession plans in place.
Conservation Groups Race Against the Clock
North Carolina does have policy tools meant to slow the bleeding. Under the state's Present-Use Value program, established in 1974, qualifying farmland of at least 10 acres generating $1,000 in gross annual income is taxed on its farming production value rather than market value — though owners must repay three years of deferred taxes plus interest if they sell the land for non-farm development, according to North Carolina State University's Cooperative Extension farm law program. Lawmakers also moved this summer to bolster preservation funding: in July, the state budget allocated $48.9 million to the Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation Trust Fund, raising recurring annual funding to $7 million, per the Carolina Journal. The fund has preserved more than 42,000 acres of working farmland since it was created.
Nonprofits are also stepping in directly. The Carolina Farms Fund, launched in late 2023 by former Belk CEO Tim Belk in partnership with The Conservation Fund, is working to preserve 5,000 acres within 75 miles of Charlotte and aims to raise $17 million in private funding over 10 years, according to Business North Carolina. Its current holdings include two farms totaling about 120 acres in Union County, and in March the fund partnered to expand the county's Boy and Girl Farm from 12 acres to 96 acres. Eva Caison, a Carolina Farms Fund program manager, said local farmers' access to land matters for food security and food safety, according to the Observer's report.
Despite those efforts, the report identifies county and city zoning and density standards as carrying the most power to actually preserve farmland going forward — more than any state tax incentive or nonprofit land purchase. Agriculture remains North Carolina's top economic driver, generating $103 billion in gross state product and accounting for roughly one-sixth of the state's total income and workforce, according to the state agriculture department, underscoring what's at stake as the fields ringing Charlotte keep giving way to rooftops and server farms.
