About the Data
Definitions, sources, and methods
per school district
per county
Figures are reported for 6 census years, five years apart. Values between them are not estimated.
Data through 2022 · published 2025.
Two different units of collection
Worth knowing before you compare two charts on the same page.
Land Trends draws on three agencies that do not report at the same geographic unit. Land use and value arrive per school district; population and operation size arrive per county. Everything is rolled up to whatever area you have selected, but the underlying units differ, which is why a land use total and a population total for the same county are not two views of one dataset.
Reported by the Texas Comptroller per Independent School District, then rolled up to counties and larger areas.
Reported per county, then rolled up to larger areas.
Core concepts
What Land Trends counts, and the two forces it tracks.
- Working Lands#ISD
Privately owned farms, ranches, and forests that produce food and fiber, support rural economies, and provide wildlife habitat, clean air and water, and recreational opportunities. Includes all cropland (irrigated and dry), grazing land (native rangeland, non-native pasture, and barren), timber land (timber, timber '78, timber in transition, and restricted timber), and other (orchards and other) agricultural lands collected and compiled from the Texas Comptroller.
- Working Lands Change#ISD
Change in total acres of Working Lands (as reported by the Texas Comptroller) from 1997 to 2022. Also includes percent change over the same period.
- Operation (Farm or Ranch)#County
The unit the USDA Census of Agriculture counts. NASS defines it as "any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year". NASS calls this a "farm", but the term covers ranches and timber tracts on identical footing; there is no separate count of ranches to report.
- Conversion#ISD
Acres that left 1-d or 1-d-1 agricultural appraisal between two reporting years. Conversion to a non-agricultural use — subdivision, development, or sale out of production — is the usual reason, and the word Land Trends uses. Three things are worth knowing before quoting the number. It measures a change in appraisal status, not observed development: land that leaves the rolls may still be open and unbuilt, which matters most for grazing land. It is a net figure, so acres entering the designation offset acres leaving it and gross conversion is higher. And it is not a claim that land physically disappeared.
- Fragmentation#
The break-up of large farms, ranches, and forests into smaller ownership sizes.
- Consolidation#
The combining of smaller farms, ranches, and forests to create larger ownerships.
- Census Years#
Land Trends reports at five-year intervals aligned to the USDA Census of Agriculture: 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012, 2017, 2022. Every chart and table steps through these years, so values between them are not interpolated.
Land use and value
Acreage and appraised value from the Texas Comptroller.
- Land Use#ISD
Annual compilation of land use and land value data from the Texas Comptroller. Includes property use, tax, and value data for private lands designated as 1-d and 1-d-1 appraisal status for all Texas ISDs. Land use categories include cropland, grazing land, wildlife management, timber, and other.
CroplandGrazing LandTimberWildlife ManagementOther- Land Use, Acres#ISD
The number of acres that fall into each specified land use category as reported by the Texas Comptroller.
- Land Use, Market Value Per Acre#ISD
The average appraised value of land, calculated as $ per acre, as reported by the Property Tax Assistance Division of the Texas Comptroller.
- Land Use, Market Value Change ($/ac.)#ISD
Change in market value per acre, from 1997 to 2022. Also includes percent change over the same period.
- Land Use, Productivity Value#ISD
The special appraised value assigned to land in agricultural or timber production, based on the land's capacity to produce rather than what it would sell for. Land qualifying for 1-d or 1-d-1 appraisal is taxed on this value, which is why it is typically far below market value per acre. The gap between the two is a useful measure of development pressure on working lands.
- 1-d and 1-d-1 Appraisal Status#ISD
Texas constitutional provisions that allow qualifying agricultural land to be appraised on its productive capacity instead of its market value. 1-d applies where farming or ranching is the owner's primary occupation and source of income; 1-d-1 (open-space) appraisal is broader and far more common. Land Trends tracks parcels in these categories because they are the working lands the Comptroller reports on. Land leaving these designations is the signal that working lands are converting.
- Cropland, Land Use Group#ISD
Includes irrigated cropland and dry cropland as reported in acres by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts (Texas Comptroller) at the Independent School District (ISD) level.
- Grazing Land, Land Use Group#ISD
Includes native rangeland, non-native pasture, and barren lands as reported in acres by the land use data from the Texas Comptroller at the ISD level.
- Timber, Land Use Group#ISD
Includes timber, timber '78, timber in transition, and restricted timber lands as reported in acres by the Texas Comptroller at the ISD level.
- Wildlife Management, Land Use Group#ISD
Includes wildlife management lands as reported in acres by the Texas Comptroller at the ISD level.
- Other, Land Use Group#ISD
Includes orchards and other agricultural lands as reported in acres by the Texas Comptroller at the ISD level.
Ownership and farm size
Farm and acre counts by size class from the USDA Census of Agriculture.
- Land in Operations#County
Number of acres in operations by size class (e.g., there were 44,326 acres in the 1 to 99 acres size class reported for Anderson County in 2017). NASS publishes this as "land in farms". Derived from county level size data as reported by the USDA, NASS.
- Operations#County
Number of operations by size class (e.g., there were 1,043 operations in the 1 to 99 acres size class reported for Anderson County in 2017). NASS publishes this as a count of "farms", which includes ranches. Derived from county level size data as reported by the USDA, NASS.
- Land in Operations, Change#County
Change in the number of acres in operations by size class from 1997 to 2022.
- Operation Count Change#County
Change in the number of operations by size class from 1997 to 2022.
- Operation Size Class#County
The acreage bands operation figures are reported in. The USDA reports a longer list of raw size classes; Land Trends rolls those up into these five groups so the classes stay comparable across every census year.
1-99 acres100-499 acres500-999 acres1000-1999 acres2000+ acres
Population
County population estimates from the United States Census Bureau.
Geographies
The areas you can query, and the units the data arrives in.
- County#County
Texas has 254 counties, each identified by a five-digit FIPS code (Anderson County is 48001). Population and ownership figures are reported per county; land use and value are reported per ISD and rolled up to it. Property within a county is appraised by an appraisal district, referred to as either a County Appraisal District or Central Appraisal District.
- Independent School District (ISD)#ISD
The unit the Texas Comptroller reports property use and value by. Land use, market value, and productivity value are all reported per ISD and are rolled up to counties and larger areas. Where districts have consolidated over the reporting period, historical figures are assigned to the surviving district, so they join cleanly to current district boundaries.
- Ecoregion#
Gould's ecoregions for the state of Texas, denoted by areas of general similarity in ecosystems and type, quality, and quantity of environmental conditions and resources. Includes the Blackland Prairies, Coastal Sand Plains, Edwards Plateau, Gulf Coast Prairies, High Plains, Llano Uplift, Oak Woods and Prairies, Piney Woods, Rolling Plains, South Texas Brush Country, and Trans Pecos ecoregions.
- River Basin#
Derived from the United States Geological Survey by the Texas Water Development Board. This dataset represents the boundaries for Texas river basins, including the Brazos, Brazos-Colorado, Canadian, Colorado, Colorado-Lavaca, Cypress, Guadalupe, Lavaca, Lavaca-Guadalupe, Neches, Neches-Trinity, Nueces, Nueces-Rio Grande, Red, Rio Grande, Sabine, San Antonio, San Antonio-Nueces, San Jacinto, San Jacinto-Brazos, Sulphur, Trinity, and Trinity-San Jacinto rivers.
- Region of Interest#County
A pre-selected group of counties studied as a unit: a metropolitan area, a highway corridor, the Gulf coastline, or a region defined by another organization such as the Hill Country Alliance. Selecting a region of interest returns the combined totals for its member counties.
7 regions are currently defined:Coastal Aransas, Brazoria, Calhoun, Cameron, Chambers, Galveston, Harris, Jackson, Jefferson, Kenedy, Kleberg, Matagorda, Nueces, Orange, Refugio, San Patricio, Victoria, WillacyDFW Collin, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Hood, Johnson, Kaufman, Parker, Rockwall, Tarrant, WiseHill Country Bandera, Bexar, Blanco, Burnet, Comal, Edwards, Gillespie, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Llano, Mason, Medina, Real, Travis, UvaldeHouston Brazoria, Chambers, Fort Bend, Galveston, Harris, Liberty, Montgomery, WallerI35 Bexar, Comal, Hays, Kendall, Travis, WilliamsonRio Cameron, HidalgoTexas Triangle Atascosa, Austin, Bandera, Bastrop, Bell, Bexar, Blanco, Bosque, Brazoria, Brazos, Burleson, Burnet, Caldwell, Chambers, Collin, Colorado, Comal, Cooke, Coryell, Dallas, Denton, Ellis, Erath, Falls, Fayette, Fort Bend, Freestone, Galveston, Gonzales, Grayson, Grimes, Guadalupe, Hamilton, Hardin, Harris, Hays, Hill, Hood, Hunt, Jack, Jefferson, Johnson, Kaufman, Kendall, Lampasas, Lee, Leon, Liberty, Limestone, Madison, McLennan, Medina, Milam, Montgomery, Navarro, Orange, Palo Pinto, Parker, Robertson, Rockwall, San Jacinto, Somervell, Tarrant, Travis, Walker, Waller, Washington, Williamson, Wilson, Wise
Sources and citation
Every figure traces to one of three agencies.
Census of Agriculture survey data (1997–2022)
Provides: Ownership size data quickstats.nass.usda.govCensus population and intercensal estimates (1997–2022)
Provides: Population data www.census.govProperty tax and value data, Property Tax Assistance Division (1997–2022)
Provides: Working lands data, Market and productivity value data comptroller.texas.govSuggested citation
Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute. (2025). Texas Land Trends Data Explorer (data 1997–2022). Retrieved from https://txlandtrends.org/To cite a specific view, use that page's address (e.g.,
/trends/county/harris/market-value), and name the area and measure. Add
your date of access. Figures come from the three agencies above; cite them too where
the underlying data is the point.
Texas A&M Natural Resources Institute • Texas Land Trends. txlandtrends@tamu.edu
Full findings are published in Status Update and Trends of Texas Working Lands (2025), which analyses data through 2022.