Which state has the biggest share of farms with woods?
🔎 Skip to the answer (ranking table)Guess
Some farms are all fields and pasture. Others have a patch of woods out back. Out of every 100 farms, which state has the most with at least some woods? Tap the states most-to-least.
Tapping assigns 1→3 in order
Vermont! It’s the Green Mountain State, so its farms must be full of trees 🐾
Answer
The real order is…
West Virginia — 73.6 out of every 100 farms have some woods. That is nearly 3 out of 4. For the United States as a whole, the figure is 39.4. Vermont is right behind at 72.6, and New Hampshire is third at 70.9. Now remember the woodiest-farmland quiz. It asked a different question: out of every 100 acres of farmland, how many are woods? New Hampshire won that one with 59.8, and West Virginia was not even in the top three, at 42.0. Same woods, two ways to count. Counting farms asks how many farms have any woods at all. Counting acres asks how much of the farmland is trees. So a state can have woods on most of its farms and still have most of its farm acres outside the woods. That is West Virginia.
📚 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.” Woods can be used for animals, too. Woodland pastured “includes all woodland used for pasture or grazing during the census year.” And not every plant with a trunk counts. “Land covered by sagebrush or mesquite was reported as Permanent pasture and rangeland or Other land.” This quiz counts farms, not acres: a farm is counted once if it has any woodland at all. The definitions do not say why West Virginia’s farms are the most likely to have 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 “Woodland pastured”. Quotations unchanged) (opens in a new tab)
🔍 Explore more: 🌿『How do you know a ginseng plant is old enough to dig?』→ Vermont! It’s the Green Mountain State, so its farms must be full of trees 🐾
Compare
Share of farms that have woods (% of farms, 2022)
Most: West Virginia (73.6 %); least: Arizona (4 %). Remember this counts farms, not acres: a farm with one small woodlot counts the same as a farm that is mostly forest.
Note: farms that reported any woodland, as a share of all 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 covered by sagebrush or mesquite is not counted as woodland. The United States bar is USDA’s own national figure. USDA NASS.
Nearly 3 farms out of 4 have woods? 🐾
Recap
🏅 Today's discovery
🏅 West Virginia is the USA's #1!
🐕 States in Numbers
Quiz a friend!
📋 See the ranking table (top 50)
| Rank | State | Value |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | West Virginia | 73.6 % |
| #2 | Vermont | 72.6 % |
| #3 | New Hampshire | 70.9 % |
| #4 | Maine | 69.4 % |
| #5 | South Carolina | 64.4 % |
| #6 | New York | 63.7 % |
| #7 | Georgia | 62.1 % |
| #8 | Tennessee | 61.5 % |
| #9 | Virginia | 61.3 % |
| #10 | Alabama | 59 % |
| #11 | Mississippi | 58.9 % |
| #12 | Pennsylvania | 58.8 % |
| #13 | Connecticut | 58.6 % |
| #14 | North Carolina | 58.4 % |
| #15 | Kentucky | 58.2 % |
| #16 | Missouri | 57.6 % |
| #17 | Arkansas | 57 % |
| #18 | Wisconsin | 56.5 % |
| #19 | Maryland | 55.4 % |
| #20 | Massachusetts | 53.9 % |
| #21 | Ohio | 52 % |
| #22 | Michigan | 50 % |
| #23 | New Jersey | 47.8 % |
| #24 | Rhode Island | 47.2 % |
| #25 | Indiana | 45.3 % |
| #26 | Delaware | 43.5 % |
| #27 | Illinois | 38 % |
| #28 | Alaska | 37.9 % |
| #29 | Louisiana | 36.8 % |
| #30 | Minnesota | 36.6 % |
| #31 | Oklahoma | 35 % |
| #32 | Oregon | 32 % |
| #33 | Florida | 29.4 % |
| #34 | Washington | 27.6 % |
| #35 | Texas | 27.2 % |
| #36 | Iowa | 26.9 % |
| #37 | Kansas | 21.4 % |
| #38 | Idaho | 14.9 % |
| #39 | Montana | 14.1 % |
| #39 | Nebraska | 14.1 % |
| #41 | Colorado | 13.1 % |
| #42 | South Dakota | 12 % |
| #43 | Hawaii | 10.8 % |
| #44 | California | 9.7 % |
| #45 | Wyoming | 9.6 % |
| #46 | New Mexico | 9 % |
| #47 | Utah | 8.3 % |
| #48 | North Dakota | 8.2 % |
| #49 | Nevada | 4.4 % |
| #50 | Arizona | 4 % |
| 🇺🇸 USA (national figure) | 39.4 % |
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (2022)
Sources
Data as of: 2022
USDA NASS Quick Stats: AG LAND, WOODLAND - AREA, MEASURED IN PCT OF FARM OPERATIONS, 2022 Census of Agriculture, by state (opens in a new tab) (2026-09-29) — 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 of farms, not of land: it says how many farms have some woods, not how much of the farmland is woods. 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 FARM OPERATIONS, Total domain, and compare states.