More — but smaller — farms across the country generated greater national net income in times of drastically less government support.

National net farm income in 2008 was $87.3 billion, up from $50.7 billion in 2000, the Census Bureau said last week. Net income was greatest in California, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois.

Meanwhile, government payments to farmers in 2008 totaled $12.2 billion, down about 50% from nearly $24.4 billion in 2005. The decrease in funding results from an approximately 90% drop in payments that depend on market prices, including countercyclical payments, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Other payments — including those from disaster relief programs and peanut and tobacco buyout programs — decreased about 40%. Agricultural government payments were highest in 2005 in the 10 years between 1998 and 2008.

The 2002 Farm Act groups government payments into four categories: direct fixed payments — based on previous cropping patterns on a fixed number of acres, payments derived from current market prices, conservation program payments and “other payments.”

“We had a surge in commodity prices those years and high export demand,” said Nelson Bills, a professor in the department of economics and management at Cornell University. “A lot of those increases trigger decreases in federal support… and there’s movement in payments from conservation support.”

The Farm Act’s countercyclical payments provision offers income support for certain crops when market prices are below a particular threshold. The decrease in countercyclical payments may be partially attributable to the fact that the all crops index of prices received by farmers jumped 45% between January 2005 and December 2008, according to the USDA.

Wyoming, Indiana and Iowa saw about a 65% decrease in government payments from 2005 to 2008, whereas Hawaii received more than a 78% increase over the same period. Just five other states — New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Nevada and Connecticut — received increased or unchanged payments.

The latest agriculture census data also reveals a greater number of farms in the U.S. — just over 2.2 million in 2007, up from more than 2.1 million in 2002 — and about a 52% increase in overall property value, but the average size of farms has fallen to 418 acres from 441 acres over the same period.

About 59.8% of farms sold less than $10,000 worth of agricultural products in 2007, and only 16.2% sold more than $100,000. That same year, agriculture was one of the largest contributors to GDP growth, alongside construction, professional and business services and real estate, rental and leasing, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.