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The 2007 Ag Census came out this week. I wrote up some info about American farms through history yesterday. In this diary, I am going to focus on the second smallest group of farms - 10 to 49 acres.
These farms made up 28.1% of all American farms in 2007 - the largest percent they've made up of our farms on record since 1964. In 1964, they made up 20.2% of all farms and that percent has gone up and down throughout history, reaching a low at 16.4% in 1974. In acreage, these farms make up 1.7% of all American farmland.
In absolute numbers, there was a decline in farms of this size since 1964 (when there were 637,434 of them), and the numbers went up and down for several years, reaching a low of 379,543 in 1974. They've been on the rise since 1992 though, and there are now 620,283 - almost as many farms of this size as there were in 1964. In fact, in 2007 there were 56,511 more farms of this size than there were in 2002.
In short - just like the smallest farms (1-9 acres), the good news is that farms of 10-49 acres increased in numbers between 2002 and 2007, but the bad news is that most people aren't actually making a living on these farms.
So who are these farmers, and what's happening on their farms?
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