Which state has the woodiest farmland?
🔎 Skip to the answer (ranking table)Guess
Picture a farm. You probably see fields, barns and cows — not a forest. But USDA’s farm census also counts the woods that belong to farms. Out of every 100 acres of farmland, which state has the most in woods? Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Maine! It’s the Pine Tree State, so its farms must be the woodiest 🐾
Answer
The real order is…
New Hampshire — 59.8 out of every 100 acres of its farmland are woods. That is more than half. For the United States as a whole, the figure is 8.2. Maine is second at 51.1, so New Hampshire’s share is about 1.17× Maine’s. Now flip the question. Count farm woods in acres instead of shares, and the winner is Texas, with 6,624,943 acres. New Hampshire is only 41st. That is because New Hampshire has very little farmland to begin with: 417,187 acres, the third smallest of all 50 states. Texas’s farm woods alone cover about 16 times as much land as every farm in New Hampshire put together. A small farm state can still be the woodiest one.
📚 Background What counts as a farm’s woods? USDA answers in the Census of Agriculture’s own list of definitions. Woodland “includes natural or planted woodlots or timber tracts, cutover and deforested land with young growth which has or will have value for wood products, and woodland pastured.” Two of the rules may surprise you. Land planted with Christmas trees does not count as woods: “Land planted for Christmas tree production and short rotation woody crops was reported in Cropland harvested.” But land in maple trees tapped for syrup does: “land in tapped maple trees was reported as Woodland not pastured.” And farmland is more than fields. Land in farms “also includes woodland and wasteland not actually under cultivation or used for pasture or grazing, provided it was part of the farm producer’s total operation.” The definitions do not say why New Hampshire’s farms have the biggest share of woods. Neither does this quiz. (USDA NASS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, Appendix B (General Explanation and Census of Agriculture Report Form), definitions “Woodland, total” and “Land in farms”. Quotations unchanged) (opens in a new tab)
🔍 Explore more: 🪨『Why are there stone walls in the New Hampshire woods?』→ Maine! It’s the Pine Tree State, so its farms must be the woodiest 🐾
Compare
Share of farmland that is woods (% of land in farms, 2022)
Most: New Hampshire (59.8 %); least: North Dakota (0.6 %). Remember this is a share: a state near the bottom can still have plenty of trees on its farms, just with far more field and pasture around them.
Note: woodland on farms as a share of all land in farms, from USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture. It counts only woods that are part of a farm, not every forest in the state. Land planted with Christmas trees counts as harvested cropland, not woodland; land in tapped maple trees counts as woodland. The United States bar is USDA’s own national figure. USDA NASS.
A farm that is mostly forest? 🐾
Recap
🏅 Today's discovery
🏅 New Hampshire is the USA's #1!
🐕 States in Numbers
Quiz a friend!
📋 See the ranking table (top 50)
| Rank | State | Value |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | New Hampshire | 59.8 % |
| #2 | Maine | 51.1 % |
| #3 | Rhode Island | 50.2 % |
| #4 | Vermont | 48.5 % |
| #5 | Massachusetts | 42 % |
| #5 | West Virginia | 42 % |
| #7 | South Carolina | 38.6 % |
| #8 | Alabama | 35.8 % |
| #9 | Georgia | 35.1 % |
| #10 | Connecticut | 32.2 % |
| #11 | Mississippi | 29.7 % |
| #12 | Virginia | 28.1 % |
| #13 | Florida | 24.2 % |
| #14 | Tennessee | 23.8 % |
| #15 | North Carolina | 22.6 % |
| #16 | New York | 21.9 % |
| #17 | Pennsylvania | 21.6 % |
| #18 | Kentucky | 21.2 % |
| #19 | New Jersey | 18.6 % |
| #20 | Arkansas | 17.4 % |
| #21 | Maryland | 16.7 % |
| #21 | Wisconsin | 16.7 % |
| #23 | Louisiana | 16.3 % |
| #24 | Missouri | 15.5 % |
| #25 | Washington | 12 % |
| #26 | Ohio | 11.4 % |
| #27 | Michigan | 10.7 % |
| #28 | Oregon | 10.3 % |
| #29 | Delaware | 8.9 % |
| #30 | Hawaii | 8.3 % |
| #31 | Oklahoma | 7.7 % |
| #32 | Indiana | 7.1 % |
| #33 | California | 7 % |
| #34 | New Mexico | 6.8 % |
| #35 | Illinois | 6.7 % |
| #36 | Minnesota | 5.7 % |
| #37 | Texas | 5.3 % |
| #38 | Alaska | 4.9 % |
| #39 | Colorado | 4.5 % |
| #39 | Montana | 4.5 % |
| #41 | Idaho | 4.2 % |
| #42 | Iowa | 4.1 % |
| #43 | Utah | 3.4 % |
| #44 | Arizona | 2 % |
| #45 | Wyoming | 1.7 % |
| #46 | Kansas | 1.4 % |
| #47 | Nevada | 1 % |
| #48 | Nebraska | 0.8 % |
| #48 | South Dakota | 0.8 % |
| #50 | North Dakota | 0.6 % |
| 🇺🇸 USA (national figure) | 8.2 % |
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022)
Sources
Data as of: 2022
USDA NASS Quick Stats: AG LAND, WOODLAND - AREA, MEASURED IN PCT OF AG LAND, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-27) — Published values only (the committed raw file holds the API response verbatim). USDA printed this share for all 50 states and withheld none, so every place in this ranking is a national place. This is a share, not an amount: a state with little farmland can top this list while a state with far more acres of farm woods sits much lower. The national figure is USDA’s own figure for the whole country, not the average of the 50 state numbers. This site re-runs those checks on every build.
↳ In Quick Stats, pick CENSUS / Census of Agriculture, year 2022, short description AG LAND, WOODLAND - AREA, MEASURED IN PCT OF AG LAND, Total domain, and compare states.