U.S. and EU, agricultural giants with fewer and fewer farmers
For all their differences, the United States and the European Union share a common experience — the abrupt decline in farm numbers, said the agriculture ministers of the agricultural powerhouses. The transformation of the agriculture sector, more recent in Europe than in the United States, resulted in a relatively small number of large farms that produce the majority of the food and many small farms with little revenue from crops and livestock.
Biggest U.S. farms get bigger
The largest farms — with sales of $1 million or more — operate nearly 26 percent of U.S. farmland, six percentage points more than they did a decade ago, even as the number of farms has changed little, said the USDA. In its annual Farms and Land in Farms report, the USDA estimated there were 2.003 million farms in the nation in 2022, a decline of 0.5 percentage points from 2012.