Trend Toward Fewer, Larger Farms Could Put Global Food Systems at Risk, Study Finds

New research from the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) shows half the number of farms that exist now will be gone by the end of the century, while the average farm size will double, a trend that could pose major risks for global food systems.

The study is the first to follow the size and number of farms yearly from 1969 to 2013, with projections through the year 2100, a press release from CU Boulder said.

“We see a turning point from widespread farm creation to widespread consolidation on a global level, and that’s the future trajectory that humanity is currently on,” said Zia Mehrabi, the author of the study and assistant professor of environmental studies at CU Boulder, in the press release. “The size of the farm and the number of farms that exist are associated with key environmental and social outcomes.”

The study, “Likely decline in the number of farms globally by the middle of the century,” was published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

In the study, Mehrabi said that current development trajectories show the number of farms worldwide will likely fall from 616 million in 2020 to 272 million by the end of the century. In that time, the average farm size will double.

“In some regions, such as Europe and North America, we will see a continued decline from recent history, whereas in other regions, including Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Oceania, and Latin America and the Caribbean, we will see a turning point from farm creation to widespread consolidation,” Mehrabi wrote.

The study showed there will be fewer operating farms even in rural Asian and African communities that are farm dependent, the press release said.

In order to reconstruct the progression of farm numbers during the study time period and project them through 2100, Mehrabi evaluated data from the UN Food and Agricultural Organization on rural population size, agricultural area and GDP per capita for more than 180 countries.

Mehrabi found that a primary reason for the reduction in the number of farms globally was that more people migrate to urban areas as a country’s economy grows, meaning fewer people are left in rural areas to cultivate and tend the land.

This has been happening for decades in Western Europe and the U.S. According to the most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture data, there were fewer farms last year than in 2007.

Mehrabi’s analysis showed that, in the future, fewer people will own and farm what land is available, even if the amount of farmland remains the same worldwide, which could threaten biodiversity.

“Larger farms typically have less biodiversity and more monocultures,” Mehrabi said in the press release. “Smaller farms typically have more biodiversity and crop diversity, which makes them more resilient to pest outbreaks and climate shocks.”

This could threaten the world’s food supply. Previous research by Mehrabi showed that the smallest farms in the world harvest a third of the planet’s food on just a quarter of the world’s agricultural land.

The fewer farms there are, the less centuries-old knowledge exists that can be shared by Indigenous farmers. This valuable information is instead replaced by modern technology and mechanization.

Mahrabi said having a diversity of food sources has long-term benefits.

“If you’re investing in today’s food systems with around 600 million farms in the world, your portfolio is pretty diverse,” Mehrabi said in the press release. “If there’s damage to one farm, it’s likely the impact to your portfolio will be averaged out with the success of another. But if you decrease the number of farms and increase their size, the effect of that shock on your portfolio is going to increase. You’re carrying more risk.”

Mehrabi hopes the findings of the study will lead to policies that preserve Indigenous knowledge, maintain climate resilience, ensure biodiversity conservation and provide improvement incentives for the planet’s rural economy.

“This world in which significantly fewer large farms replace numerous smaller ones carries major rewards and risks for the human species and the food systems that support it,” Mehrabi wrote in the study.