Lesson Plan
Grades 6-8
Grades 9-10
Grades 11-12
Farmsteaders: The New Generation of Family Farming Quick Facts
Quick Facts
- Only 1 percent of the population currently claims farming as their occupation, as opposed to 40 percent just over a century ago.
- Small farms accounted for 46 percent of U.S. agriculture production in 1991, but by 2015, that share had fallen to under 25 percent.
- According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were nearly 650,000 dairy farms in the U.S. in 1970, but just 40,219 remained at the end of 2017 and 66 percent of all dairy sales come from the 3 percent of farms that are large or very large family farms.
- 42,000 dairy farmers have gone out of business since 2000 due to changing markets, farm loans, and pressures from corporate agriculture.
- The top 10 percent of farms in terms of size account for more than 70 percent of cropland in the United States.
- Only eight percent of U.S. farms market foods locally through farmers’ markets and food hubs.
- 36 percent of all producers are female and 56 percent of all farms have at least one female decision maker.
- Almost one-third of America’s primary farm operators are over the age of 65. Primary producers over 65 now outnumber those under 35 by more than 6 to 1.
- Farms with young producers making decisions tend to be larger than average in both acres and sales. There are 321,261 young producers age 35 or less on 240,141 farms.
- 27 percent of farmers are categorized as new and beginning producers with less than 10 years of experience in agriculture.
Sources
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