The 2007 USDA Census of Agriculture released last week identified ongoing trends in the changing landscape of the American farm and food system. It's a mixed bag, but shows that all the work done over the past 20-30 years by the organic and regional farm movements are starting to have real, mainstream effects.
I expect we'll be back with more once we have some time to slice and dice the USDA data, but for now, in brief, here are some of the continuing trends:
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the number of farms overall is increasing slightly, but
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the size of the statistically average farm is shrinking, while
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the percentage of total production from the largest farms continues to increase, because
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capital and government subsidy flows primarily to the largest producers, and so
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the percentage of farmers with off-farm income increased again, and while
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the average farmer is a guy sort of like me: a 57 year old white male (I'm 59),
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the number of women farmers grew another 30% and
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the number of organic farmers grew by more than 50% since the last census
We are also following aspects of this on our blog Big MACC Attack, which looks at the effects of industrialization of the farm / food system, and the blog Sinks or Swim, which is about the relationship between agriculture and climate change.
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