What will rural communities look like when the family farm becomes rare, but food production is more high-tech than ever?

This is a complicated story.

In some respects, family farms remain the dominant farm type in the United States. For example, the USDA defines family farms as “any farm organized as a sole proprietorship, partnership, or family corporation. Family farms exclude farms organized as nonfamily corporations or cooperatives, as well as farms with hired managers.” By this definition, over 95 percent of the nation’s 2.2 million farms are family farms.

But for many decades the trend in agriculture has been increasing consolidation toward a smaller number of large farms with greater productive capacity. According to the USDA, of the 2.2 million family farms, fewer than 200,000 large operations produce over 60 percent of all domestic food and fiber products sold. These are family farms, but they are also large, technology-intensive, sophisticated businesses.

On the other hand, that idea that contemporary rural life is synonymous with agriculture is a myth and misunderstanding. The shift from many smaller farms to fewer larger farms means most rural Americans don’t have direct economic ties to agriculture anymore. Direct farm employment accounts for just over 1% of total U.S. employment and represents a minority of jobs even in the most sparsely populated counties in the country. The service and manufacturing sectors are the dominant jobs sectors in rural America today. Job losses in American manufacturing have been especially painful in many rural and small-town places. It is one thing for a plant to shut down in large diversified city, but quite another when it is the lone “good jobs” employer in town.