In 2007, Dorothy Jones came very close to becoming a statistic.

About to turn 60 with arthritis creeping into a few of her joints, she put 30 acres of the farm her father bought in the 1940s up for sale.

“I was tired,” she said Thursday evening, sitting with her husband, Mac, on the front porch of her home at the Harrison farm.

After the farm was on the market for a year, she decided she would take down the “For Sale” sign and get back into the fields, bringing in goats and cattle where her father had grown strawberries and cotton.

“Everything about this place reminds me of how hard my dad worked,” she said.

But many farmers in Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia didn’t have the same change of heart as Mrs. Jones. The three states lost 1.5 million acres of farmland between 1987 and 2007, a 5 percent decrease, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2007 Census of Agriculture released in February.

The 20-county tri-state region gained about 11,000 acres, or 1 percent, of farmland during the span, though that was buoyed by 13 percent growth in Jackson and DeKalb counties in Alabama. The 18 counties in Northwest Georgia and Southeast Tennessee lost more than 45,000 acres, or 4 percent, in the span.

Despite shrinking acreage, the USDA report shows a significant increase in the number of farms in the region, which experts say stems from retirees operating small “hobby” farms. The USDA defines a farm as any operation that sells $1,000 or more of agricultural products in a given year.

Experts say development and rising expenses have led many full-time farmers to abandon all or part of their operations.

“You’ve got more development and more people moving in that are part-time farmers,” said Ted Dyer, extension beef specialist for Gordon County, Ga.

When the economy is good, as it was earlier this decade, it can be difficult for farmers not to sell high, said Kim Frady, Bradley County extension agent.

“It’s really hard in a booming economy for those guys to farm $10,000-an-acre land,” he said.

Couple the temptation to sell with a few disappointing harvests and rising costs, and many farmers may cash in their chips.

“Farmers are not people who tend to give up, but if you toil along for a few years without making any money, eventually you’re going to have to give it up,” said Brant Crowder, who farms 650 acres on McDonald Farm in Sale Creek, Tenn.

BUYING IN

As older farmers get out of the business, anyone looking to replace them faces an uphill challenge, according to area farmers. Farmland that used to sell for a few hundred dollars an acre now goes for thousands, making it tough to buy in, Mr. Crowder said.

In Hamilton County in particular, rising land values present an obstacle for new farmers, according to Hamilton County Extension Agent Dr. Ray Burden.

When Ms. Jones’ father bought the farm in the 1940s, he paid $1,500 for the 60-acre lot. When she put her 30 acres up for sale along with the house and barn, she was asking $800,000.

“Unless you’re in a position to inherit or take over another farm, it’s expensive to start,” Dr. Burden said.

Shrinking acreage may be bad news for more than just farmers, according to experts. The decrease puts more pressure on the farms still in operation, Dr. Burden explained. Fewer acres means food production is concentrated in certain areas, leaving the nation’s food supply at risk.

“The danger there is if you have flood or disease ... we could see an interruption in the food chain which we’ve never seen in this country,” Dr. Burden said.

Nadine Woods, who has 1.5 million chickens at farms in Rising Fawn, Ga., and Flat Rock, Ala., said she’s already seen evidence of a dwindling domestic food supply with some fast-food restaurants importing beef from Argentina.

“I think it’s going to mean a lot less domestic-grown meat products,” she theorized.

Consumers need to consider where their food comes from to help support local farms, she said.

“That food is just magically on the shelf, and they don’t think about it,” she said.

COUNTING FARMS

While the agriculture census report shows an increase in the number of farms, some question the data’s accuracy.

Mr. Dyer, who was the Dade County, Ga., extension officer before moving to Gordon County, said he hasn’t seen “an influx of new farms in the area.”

“To tell you the truth I just think they did a better job of collecting the census in 2007,” he said.

The census figures show 18 percent growth in the number of farms in the tri-state region, with 6 percent overall growth in all of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee. Dade County in Georgia led the increase at 59 percent, going from 167 farms in 1987 to 266 in 2007.

USDA statistician Scott Shimmin said the number of farms might be misleading because the agency went to extra lengths to collect data from smaller farms in 2007 that it may have missed in the past.

“There are a certain percentage of new farms that came in since the last census but there are others that didn’t get counted (in the past),” he said.

The irregularities in the farm numbers could have lowered the average farm-size category, according to Mr. Shimmin. The average size of farms dropped in each of the 20 tri-state counties in the 20-year window, with the region going from an average of 166.5 acres per farm down to 138.7. As a whole, the average farm size in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee dropped from 201.7 acres down to 178.3 acres, according to the data.

He and others said the average farm size also decreased because of an increasing number of part-time or hobby farms runs by retirees.

Mr. Crowder said these small farms may be a great food source for the owners and nearby friends or neighbors, but overall they don’t contribute very much to the nation’s food supply. He used convenience stores as an analogy to compare large farms and part-time operations.

“It can’t supply everything, but it’s nice to have,” he said.

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