Texas leads the nation in privately owned working lands, which account for 140 million acres, or 81% of the state's entire land area. These important lands provide substantial economic, environmental, and recreational resources that benefit both residents and visitors alike.

• Texas contains eight of the 15 fastest-growing cities in the nation (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 population estimates).
• From 1997 to 2022, the Texas population increased from 19 million to 30 million residents, an increase of 55%, or over 1,100 new residents daily.
• From 2017 to 2022 alone, Texas gained over 1.7 million residents, roughly 950 people per day.
• The majority of the population increase (88%) occurred within the state's top 25 highest total population growth counties. These counties account for only 9% of the total land area of the state, yet 75% of all Texans reside within these 25 counties.

Historically, land market values served as a strong indicator of rural land demand. Like more traditional home real estate values, rural land market values vary by location, land use, and property size, among other factors.

• The largest increases in land values were observed, as with previous reports, in proximity to major metropolitan areas.
• The average appraised market value of Texas working lands was $3,021 per acre in 2022, a 55% increase since 2017 ($1,951 per acre) and a 505% increase over the 25-year period ($499 per acre in 1997).

For both small and mid-sized operations, fragmentation and conversion continue to be closely related to proximity to major urban areas and transportation corridors. As urban centers grow in human population, the demand for surrounding rural land increases, raising land market values, and subsequently increasing landowners' incentive to subdivide or sell their working lands for suburban or urban use. In contrast, consolidation of working lands may be driven by the ability of prospective buyers to capitalize on both land values and land availability, appearing to occur in certain regions of the state (e.g., High Plains and Rolling Plains Ecological Regions).

• Texas had more than 17,000 fewer farm and ranch operations in 2022 than in 2017, though it still counts almost 2,500 more than in 1997, with more than 230,000 in total.
• Average operation size increased from 509 acres in 2017 to 541 acres in 2022.
• Small operations (under 100 acres) represent 60% of all operations but account for only 3% of all working lands.
• Large operations (over 2,000 acres) experienced the sharpest five-year decline in Texas Land Trends history, decreasing by more than 1,000 operations.

Approximately 3.7 million acres were converted from working lands to nonagricultural uses between 1997 and 2022, including more than 1.8 million acres from 2017 to 2022.

• The annual land conversion rate within the top 25 highest growth counties over the 25-year period was about 67,000 acres per year (45% of the statewide total), compared with the remaining 229 counties' annual average of more than 81,000 acres per year (55%).
• Accounting for most working lands in the state, grazing lands have been steadily decreasing since 1997, with roughly 6.7 million acres converted to other land uses over the 25-year period.
• Wildlife management acres have significantly increased in recent years, now totaling approximately 6.9 million acres, up from about 94,000 in 1997.