A farm is the basic unit in agriculture. It is a section of land devoted to the production and management of food, either produce or livestock. It may be an enterprise owned and operated by a single individual, family, or community, or it may be owned by a corporation or company.
The word has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon word feorm, which relates to provisioning and foot supply, and was originally indicative of a form of taxation, whereby goods or monetary equivalents were liable to the king. Over time, this taxation was translated into a form of rental tax.
The development of farming and farms was an important component in establishing towns. Once a people move from hunting and collecting and from simple horticulture to active farming, social arrangements of roads, distribution, collection, and marketing can evolve. With the exception of plantations and colonial farms, farm sizes tend to be small in newly settled lands and to extend as transportation and markets become sophisticated. Farming rights have been central to a number of revolutions, wars of liberation, and post-colonial economics.
Enterprises where livestock are raised on rangeland are called ranches. Where livestock are raised in confinement on feed produced elsewhere, the term feedlot is usually used. A truck farm is a farm that raises vegetables, but little or no grain. Truck is an archaic word for vegetables. Orchard is used for enterprises producing tree fruits or nuts, and vineyard is used for enterprises producing raisins, wine or table grapes. The stable is used for operations principally involved in the production of horses.
Cropland is land in farms that is devoted to crop production; it is not to be confused with total farmland, a broad land- use or land-ownership category that can incorporate many forms of land cover.
Changes in the area and the location of cropland, for example, are the result of the addition of new cropland from conversion of grassland, forest, and wetland and its subtraction either by abandonment of cropping and reversion to one of these less intensive use/cover forms or by conversion to developed land.
Cropland abandonment in some areas of New England began to be significant in some areas by the middle of the nineteenth century.
Together, harvested cropland, crop failure, and summer fallow accounted for 340 million acres of cropland used for crops in 2002, unchanged from 2001.
The decrease in cropland used for crops reflects lower harvested acres of wheat and, to a lesser degree, sorghum, barley, oats, and cotton.
Harvested cropland fluctuated from a low of 297 million acres in 1993 to a high of 321 million acres in 1997 and declined to 307 million acres in 2002.
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