The World Could Lose Half of all Farms by 2100
A new study says that half of all farms globally will disappear by the end of the century, while the average size of existing farms will double. Here’s why that’s a problem.
A study from researchers at the University of Colorado, Boulder predicts that the number of farms worldwide will significantly shrink by the end of this century, posing problems in our food system.
Published in the journal Nature Sustainability this spring, the study created a model of farms worldwide to look at past patterns and predict their effects into the future. Beginning with global farm numbers from 1969, researchers modeled their evolution into 2100.
According to their current trajectories, the number of farms is predicted to drop to just 272 million by the end of this century from 616 million in 2020.
At the same time, the average farm size is predicted to double. The study shows that some areas, including Europe and North America, will see a relatively steady decline in farm numbers, while other areas, including Latin America and North Africa, will go from a period of farm creation to one of consolidation by mid-century.
Lead researcher Zia Mehrabi, a professor of environmental studies, used data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization to look at agricultural areas, economic output and population size of more than 180 countries.
One of the main reasons Mehrabi found for the decline is economic growth. As a country’s economy gets stronger, Mehrabi found, more people leave rural areas for urban ones, with fewer folks able to tend to rural farmland. That could have devastating effects on our food supply.
“Larger farms typically have less biodiversity and more monocultures,” Mehrabi said in a news release. “Smaller farms typically have more biodiversity and crop diversity, which makes them more resilient to pest outbreaks and climate shocks.”
Mehrabi’s research points to farm and land consolidation; even if the amount of total farmland stays roughly the same, his model shows that fewer people will own that land. Fewer farmers means less knowledge transfer passed from generation to generation, as more and more farm work will be automated.
This decline in farms is already occurring. Within the US, the number of farms has been falling slowly since the 1980s. In 2022, there were 2 million farms noted across the country. That’s a drop of 200,000 farms from 2007 numbers.
“Currently, we have around 600 million farms feeding the world, and they’re carrying eight billion people on their shoulders,” said Mehrabi. “By the end of the century, we’ll likely have half the number of farmers feeding even more people. We really need to think about how we can have the education and support systems in place to support those farmers.”
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].The World Could Lose Half of all Farms by 2100
by Emily Baron Cadloff, Modern Farmer
July 27, 2023
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreExplore other topics
Share With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
“By the end of the century, we’ll likely have half the number of farmers feeding even more people. We really need to think about how we can have the education and support systems in place to support those farmers.”
Of course another and possibly more sustainable solution might be to try and make farming more attractive by placing more value on food production, recognising the effort and dedication it takes to produce good food, and pay farmers accordingly.
Emily C.– it would be interesting to hear you thoughts in a followup story on the environmental and social impacts of this transition in farming.
Increasing FARM SIZE has several advantages including increased production per unit area. In INDIA there are several farmers owning just one hectare land in 5 to 6 farms or at places.
Need of the day is consolidation of land i.e instead of having one hectare land at 5 or 6 places as mentioned above, have it at one place which is more profitable and to increase overall production per unit area.
This is probably true, but not a new trend. As economies grow and develop, people move out of subsistence farming, and farms consolidate. A century ago, more than half of Americans worked in agriculture, today it’s about 3%, but there is nearly as much land farmed as there was in the past. Meanwhile, the productivity of these farms has increased tremendously. In the developing world, many countries are where the US was a century ago, in terms of the number of people in agriculture.
Its really a serious concern.
I am not familiar with this information. It is quite beneficial to me. I appreciate you sharing.