Agriculture in the United States has changed sharply, and the figures show it. The number of U.S. farms peaked at 6.8 million in 1935 and then fell sharply until the early 1970s. As of 2024, the United States had 1.88 million farms, down 8 percent from the 2.04 million in the 2017 Census of Agriculture. In the early 1900s an average U.S. farmer produced enough food to feed a family of five, and many of today's farmers can feed that family and about 100 other people. As of 2023, total U.S. farm output had nearly tripled since 1948. Advances in animal and crop genetics, chemicals, equipment and machinery, and farm organization have let farmers combine inputs in new ways that increase productivity.

You may have heard that all farms are giant factories run by big companies. Family farms of various types made up 97 percent of U.S. farms in 2024, and small family farms made up 86 percent. Large-scale family farms, with $1 million or more in gross cash farm income, were about 5 percent of U.S. farms in 2024 but 50 percent of the value of production. The two figures sit side by side: 86 percent of farms were small family farms, and about 5 percent were large-scale family farms that produced half of the value of production.

In the early 1800s, scientists discovered that nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium were the most important nutrients for growing plants. Crop rotation means growing a series of different crops in the same field over the seasons, and it helps break the cycle of pests and disease that builds up when one crop is grown again and again. A legume cover crop in a rotation can provide a substantial amount of nitrogen to the crop that follows. Studies show yield increases of 10 to 15 percent in soybeans and corn when crops are rotated, but order matters: corn or sorghum grown before wheat can increase the incidence of fusarium head blight in wheat.

The High Plains Aquifer, also known as the Ogallala Aquifer, is the largest aquifer in North America and lies under large parts of the Plains regions. Irrigation water comes from groundwater pumped from aquifers or from surface water such as streams, rivers and lakes. Irrigated area in the U.S. has expanded more than 10-fold from 1890 to 2022, while per-acre water use has declined since 1969. The Aral Sea shrank from 68,000 to fewer than 17,000 square kilometers after rivers feeding it were diverted to irrigate crops in desert regions of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Corn and soybeans brought in $104.1 billion, or 43.7 percent, of the $238.4 billion in U.S. crop cash receipts in 2025. Food also moves across borders. U.S. agricultural imports often include products that cannot easily be produced in the United States, such as tropical products or off-season produce, as of November 2026. In 2025 U.S. agricultural imports fell slightly from a 2024 record of $213 billion to $212 billion. Four categories typically make up about 90 percent of U.S. agricultural exports: grains and feeds, oilseeds and products, livestock and animal products, and horticultural products, as of November 2026.

Labels can show how food was grown and checked. Organic certification allows a farm or processing facility to sell, label and represent its products as organic, and USDA-accredited certifying agents are responsible for making sure USDA organic products meet all organic standards. For eggs, about 60 percent of those sold in the U.S. come from processors that pay for USDA grading, which lets cartons carry a USDA Grade A or AA shield, as of November 2026.

Eggs and milk are two farm foods that are kept cold. In the United States, eggs are cleaned and kept cold after hens lay them, while eggs in much of the European Union are neither washed nor refrigerated, unlike in the U.S., Canada, Japan and Scandinavia. On a dairy farm, milk is cooled as soon as possible, collected in a bulk tank and then transported to a processor. Even after pasteurization, milk must be kept cold to stop remaining spoilage bacteria from growing.

The cold chain is a series of refrigerated cooling, storage and transport steps that keeps food at the right temperature from grower to consumer. It has two stages: an upstream stage right after harvest, and a downstream stage that covers transport, distribution and delivery. Fresh produce must be cooled within hours of harvest, otherwise a large share can be lost before it even leaves the farm. Metabolic activity in stored produce, including respiration, decreases as temperature falls. The molds and bacteria that cause decay in harvested produce generally need warm temperatures to grow.

Refrigerated trucks, rail cars and containers allowed California, Florida and other states to become nationwide suppliers of perishable produce, dairy and other foods. The cold chain depends on energy, which makes it hard to build in developing countries and rural areas where electricity supply may be unreliable or unavailable. FAO data show 526 million tonnes of food, around 12 percent of the global total, are lost or wasted due to insufficient refrigeration, as of November 2026.

In 2019, EPA estimated about 66 million tons of wasted food were generated in the food retail, food service and residential sectors, and about 60 percent went to landfills. In 2018, more food reached U.S. landfills and combustion facilities than any other single material in everyday trash. Sustainable Development Goal target 12.3 aims to halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains by 2030.

Words to know

• aquifer: underground water
• productivity: farm output
• certification: official approval
• downstream: later stage