The farm population has declined fairly steadily for more than half a century. By 1970 the proportion of the U.S. population residing on farms had fallen to about 5 per cent, and by 1977 had dropped to 3.6 per cent. About 1.4 per cent of the farm population was of Spanish origin (represented for the first time in this year's report), as compared…

Based on the current definition for farm population (all persons living in rural territory on places which in the reporting year had, or normally would have had, sales of agricultural products of $1,000 or more), an average of 6,241,000 persons lived on farms in the United States in 1979, a drop of 2.8% from the 1978 figures. Whites constituted…

Based on the new farm definition (places of 10 or more acres if at least $50 worth of agricultural products were sold in the reporting year, and places of under 10 acres if at least $250 worth of agricultural products were sold), 6,501,000 persons, or 3% of the nation's population, lived on farms for the 12-month period centered on April 1978.…