Counting farmers

There are 2.2 million farms in the US, but only 45% of these farms claim ‘farming’ as their principle occupation, or 990,000 farms. And only 25% of these farms gross more than $50K, or 550,000 farms. About 180,000 farms account for 60% of all agricultural sales.

This is down from the peak of 6.8 million farms in 1935 (when the US population was 127 million).

A few people have suggested we try reversing the loss of farmers;