After peaking at 6.8 million farms in 1935, the number of U.S. farms fell sharply until the early 1970s. Rapidly falling farm numbers during the earlier period reflected growing productivity in agriculture and increased nonfarm employment opportunities. Since then, the number of U.S. farms has continued to decline, but much more slowly. In the most recent survey, there were 2.01 million U.S. farms in 2021, down from 2.20 million in 2007. With 895 million acres of land in farms in 2021, the average farm size was 445 acres, only slightly greater than the 440 acres recorded in the early 1970s.

1910 - 92,228,531

1930 - 123,202,660

1950 - 151,325,798

1970 - 203,211,926

1990 - 248,709,873

2010 - 308,745,538

2020 - 331,449,281

Source: www.census.gov

Technological developments in agriculture have been influential in driving changes in the farm sector. Innovations in animal and crop genetics, chemicals, equipment, and farm organization have enabled continuing output growth without adding much to inputs. As a result, even as the amount of land and labor used in farming declined, total farm output nearly tripled between 1948 and 2019.