The Number of Farms in the World is Declining
hubie writes:
New University of Colorado Boulder research shows the number of farms globally will shrink in half as the size of the average existing farms doubles by the end of the 21st century, posing significant risks to the world's food systems.
Published today in the journal Nature Sustainability, the study is the first to track the number and size of farms year-over-year, from the 1960s and projecting through 2100.
The study shows that even rural, farm-dependent communities in Africa and Asia will experience a drop in the number of operating farms.
[...] His analysis found that the number of farms around the world would drop from 616 million in 2020 to 272 million in 2100. A key reason: As a country's economy grows, more people migrate to urban areas, leaving fewer people in rural areas to tend the land.
A decline in the number of farms and an increase in farm size has been happening in the United States and Western Europe for decades. The most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates there were 200,000 fewer farms in 2022 than in 2007.
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