United States agriculture enjoyed a booming economy, with market values of crops, livestock and total agricultural products reaching record highs even as the amount of U.S. farmland declined, according to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, conducted by the National Agricultural Statistics Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Continuing a long-term trend, the number of U.S. farms dropped to 2.1 million in 2012, about a 4 percent drop from five years earlier. But some of the bigger farms got bigger. The average farm grew from 418 to 434 acres.
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