Print This PageThe American Farmer: Caring for our Land, Growing our Economy for Generations
Every day, American farmers rise to meet the challenge of feeding and clothing the world. Satisfying world demand is exactly what they do. America sends her bounty all over the world, and it all starts on family farms.
To these men and women, the land is more than a livelihood – it’s a legacy. It’s a resource to be cared for, preserved, improved and passed along to the next generation. They’re the caretakers of our land. They make their living from it. They provide for all of us with it.
In some way, we’re all connected to agriculture. And that’s why we should honor the American farmer.
Providing for the World: Facts about the American Farmer
- To keep up with population growth more food will have to be produced in the next 50 years as the past 10,000 years combined.
- Today, the average U.S. farmer feeds 155 people. In 1960, a farmer fed just 26 people.
- Today’s farmer grows twice as much food as his parents did – using less land, energy, water, fertilizers, pesticides and fewer emissions.
- American farmers ship more than $100 billion of their crops to many nations.
- U.S. farmers produce about 40 percent of the world's corn, using only 20 percent of the total area harvested in the world.
- Farmers are a direct lifeline to more than 24 million U.S. jobs in all kinds of industries.
- In the past five years, U.S. farm operators have become more demographically diverse. The 2007 census counted nearly 30 percent more women as principal farm operators. The count of Hispanic operators grew by 10 percent, and the counts of American Indian, Asian and African-American farm operators increased as well.
Sources of Information: USDA ERS, FAO, EPA, USDA Census of Ag, USDA FAS and NCGA.
