38. Appalachian agriculture remained a mostly family affair
Beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the end of the twentieth-century American agriculture underwent a transition with many family-owned and operated farms being absorbed by commercial entities. The transition was not as severe in Appalachia, where though the climate is for the most part conducive to farming the topography is not. Smaller, family-owned farms remained prevalent. Nevertheless, the number of farms and the acreage in crops has declined steadily since the 1950s, and though farming remained an important part of the region’s economy the number of jobs and the income derived from agriculture, as with coal and logging, continued to drop through the twentieth century.
