Rural development objectives are often framed relative to a targeted number of beneficiary farms and farm households. Yet the data available on the number and distribution of the world’s farms has been surprisingly fragmented and coherent estimates of the number of farms in a given region for a given year have not been available. We take a set of simple rules to use existing data sources to generate a harmonized set of farm number estimates at the national level. We estimate there are 656 million farms globally in 2020, with a projected decline to 624 million farms globally by 2030. These estimates can be used to better inform policy and large-scale investment programming and design. We also articulate the need for further investments in basic agricultural census data, and outline an agenda for the generation of farm distribution data that would be most useful for further policy guidance.

农村发展目标通常是相对于目标数量的受益农场和农户制定的。然而，关于世界农场数量和分布的可用数据令人惊讶地支离破碎，并且无法获得特定年份特定区域农场数量的一致估计。我们采用一组简单的规则，使用现有数据源在国家层面生成一组统一的农场数量估计值。我们估计 2020 年全球有 6.56 亿个农场，预计到 2030 年全球将减少到 6.24 亿个农场。这些估计可用于更好地为政策和大规模投资规划和设计提供信息。我们还阐明需要进一步投资于基本农业普查数据，