Farm Population Estimates for 1969

Excerpts from the report: An average of 10,307,000 persons lived on farms in the Nation's rural areas during the 12 months centered on April 1969. This figure is an indicated decline of 147,000 persons since the preceding year. Because the data are based on a sample survey, the chances are about one out of three that a change this size or greater would have been obtained in the survey even if no actual change had occurred. The 1969 farm population comprised about 5 percent of the total U.S. population. Between 1960 and 1969, the U.S. farm population dropped by 34.1 percent. Geographically, the rate of loss ranged from 46.6 percent in New England to a low 27.5 percent in the East North Central States. Aside from New England, the heaviest declines occurred in a belt of States stretching westerly across the South Central part of the Nation into the Mountain Division