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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowThe federal government's first agriculture census in five years shows Indiana lost more than 2,200 farms between 2007 and 2012.
Preliminary data released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture show Indiana had more than 58,000 farms in 2012. That's a decline of nearly 4 percent from the 2007 census report.
That drop is in contrast to the 2007 census, which showed Indiana had added about 640 farms between 2002 and 2007.
The new report says Indiana's average farm size grew to 251 acres in 2012, up from 242 acres in 2007.
It also says Indiana had 14.7 million farm acres in 2012. That's a slight drop from 2007.
The full report on the 2012 agriculture census will be released in May, with detailed county-level data for the entire nation.
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