From 1969 to 2021, U.S. farm employment dropped 35 percent. In a recent study, Mark White, Professor in the Department of Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois, takes a look at some of the trends surrounding farm employment.
“A lot of those big declines that took place really took place in the Southeast, the Midwest, and the Plains. Obviously, technology plays a really big role in this, machines now do what multiple people did in the past. Sometimes the nature of different crops lends itself to greater use of technology. For instance, technology played a big role in corn and bean production, whereas, relativity speaking, fruits and vegetables tend to require more hands,” said White. “We have also seen over these last 50 years, substantial consolidation of farms, so there are fewer farm workers but much larger farms. And then, another factor is urbanization, particularity in the south but also elsewhere in the country.”
The report found that in western regions of the United States, farm employment has held steady over the last 50 years.
