Agricultural production in the 21st century, on the other hand, is concentrated on a smaller number of large, specialized farms in rural areas where less than a fourth of the U.S. population lives.
The number of farms in the United States for 2019 is estimated at 2,023,400, down 5,800 farms from 2018. Total land in farms, at 897,400,000 acres, decreased 2,100,000 acres from 2018. The average farm size for 2019 is 444 acres, up 1 acre from the previous year.
The number of U.S. farms has continued to decline, but much more slowly. In the most recent survey, there were 2.02 million U.S. farms in 2020, down from 2.20 million in 2007. With 897 million acres of land in farms in 2020, the average farm size was 444 acres, only slightly greater than the 440 acres recorded in the early 1970s. While farmland may stretch far and wide, farmers and ranchers themselves make up just 1.3% of the employed US population, totaling around 2.6 million people. Today, there are about 2 million farms in operation in the US, a steep decline from 1935, when the number of farms peaked at nearly 7 million. Most farmers receive off-farm income, but small-scale operators depend on it
