Big Money Farming. More Acres, Fewer Men.

This article presents information on the transforming landscape of American farms. From 1920 to 1950 the number of farms containing from ten to 260 acres dwindled from 5,500,000 to 4,100,000. The number of American farms of all sizes fell in that thirty-year interval by one million, from 6,400,000 to 5,400,000. The land yielded up by these disappearing enterprises has been, in the main, consolidated by the larger farms. The acreage held by farms 1,000 acres and over increased swiftly from 221,000,000 in 1920 to 495,000, 000 or 43 per cent of the farm acreage-by 1950. These giants comprise only 2.5 per cent of all farms, and as they increased their acreage they also increased the average quality of their lands.