Why does the split between tillable ground and pasture matter to a farm's price?
Because cropland and pasture are measured and reported as different classes of land, and a buyer reads that split as what the farm can produce. The Farm Service Agency's cropland test asks whether ground is tilled now or was tilled and is still suitable, while the census counts grazable land as permanent pasture. No public county figure prices the difference; it is weighed in an opinion of value.
Cropland is a tilled-or-suitable test, pasture is a grazable-land test
The split a listing shows between tillable ground and pasture is not one measurement applied twice. Behind the two words sit two different definitions, from two different federal programs, and they answer different questions about the same ground.
- Tillable is a working word. The closest formal test beside it, the Farm Service Agency's cropland definition, asks whether the county committee finds ground tilled now, or tilled in a prior year and still suitable for crop production.
- The Census of Agriculture treats permanent pasture as grazable land that is not woodland or cropland pasture. Cropland used only for pasture is counted as its own category.
So a field that was tilled in a prior year and is still suitable for crops can meet the FSA cropland test while cattle graze it this year; one label describes what the ground can do, the other how it is used.
A buyer reads the split as what the farm can produce
A buyer looking at acreage figures is asking what the ground can do. Tillable acreage points toward crops or hay ground worked with equipment; pasture points toward grazing livestock, with its own fencing and water needs. Ground in a hollow, which in federal naming is simply a valley, is sorted into the same classes by how it is used, not by what the place is called.
Neither label tells a buyer whether the ground qualifies for a tax program. That question runs through Virginia's own land use standards, covered at Virginia's land use program. How the split sits alongside the water, the barns and the frontage in a whole farm's number is the broader subject of how is a farm priced.
Cropland meets a yield test, grazing land meets an animal-unit test
Where tillable ground or pasture is weighed against Virginia's land use taxation standards for use value assessment, rather than the federal categories above, each use has its own bar.
| Use | The standard |
|---|---|
| Field crop production | Primarily for commercial uses, with average yield per acre on each crop at least one-half of the county (city) average for the past three years; the local government may prescribe lesser requirements when unusual circumstances prevail and such requirements are not realistic |
| Livestock, dairy and poultry | At least 12 animal unit-months of commercial livestock or poultry per five acres of open land in the previous year |
How a small place kept mostly for enjoyment fares against these same standards is its own question at what counts as a hobby farm.
Carroll County's acreage split is public; a price for the split is not
The 2022 Census of Agriculture put Carroll County's land in farms at 31,859 acres of cropland, 47,809 acres of pastureland, 27,677 acres of woodland and 4,596 acres of other land. Those are census acreages by use, and they say nothing about what any of that ground is worth.
USDA's NASS Land Values 2026 Summary, released July 31, 2026, reports farm real estate, cropland and pasture values by state and places Virginia in its Appalachian region. It is not a county report, and no primary public source gives a county figure pricing cropland against pasture here. What a particular farm's split is worth is weighed in an opinion of value, alongside the water, the fencing, the barns and the frontage, which is where selling your farm starts.
Weighing a farm with a mix of tillable ground and pasture?
Send the county and roughly how the acreage divides between tillable ground and pasture. Lowell will read the fields by how they are used and come back with the reasoning behind the number. No cost, no obligation.
Got it. Thank you.
We'll be in touch shortly with an honest read.
Questions this raises
Does more tillable acreage always mean a farm is worth more than one with more pasture?
No general rule answers that. No public county figure prices cropland against pasture in this footprint, and USDA's land values report is a state and regional report, not a county one. What a specific split is worth depends on the ground and what a buyer plans to do with it, and is weighed in an opinion of value, not a fixed ratio.
Does the yield test compare my crop to the state average or the county average?
The county (city) average. Virginia's standard asks that the average crop yield per acre on each crop grown be at least one-half of the county (city) average for the past three years, and lets the local government prescribe lesser requirements when unusual circumstances prevail. How that is measured on a given farm is the Commissioner of the Revenue's call.
Where this page's facts come from
Every rule, office and figure above traces to one of these. Rules change; check the office before you act on one.
- 7 CFR 718.2, cropland definition for Farm Service Agency programs Electronic Code of Federal Regulations
- 2022 Census of Agriculture, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Appendix B, land use definitions USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- 2022 Census of Agriculture, Carroll County, Virginia county profile USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Land Values 2026 Summary USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- 2VAC5-20-30, standards for field crop and livestock production Virginia Administrative Code
- GNIS domestic names feature classes (valley) U.S. Geological Survey