The IRS publishes guidelines which are available from their website.
If your records are organized and filed logically, they don't take up much room. I have all my tax returns back to 1958 and all of the accounting records from the 20 years we were ranching. All of them don't take up a whole file cabinet.
You need to be able to prove what you paid for property in the year you sell it, so land records are important.
I have a degree in accounting and was Manager of Tax compliance for one of the largest companies in the country when I retired. Of course, they had mountains of paper.
You need to know that the normal statue of limitations is mentioned above, but if you cheat, the statute never runs out.
Herd records, FSA stuff, etc. don't normally affect your taxes so no one really cares except you.
feeder is right though. If you throw somethjing away that you need later, it is a real pain.
I did get Audited a couple of years ago(they came to the house). I told them to take whatever they wanted as long as they brought it back. They fooled around with it for a couple of weeks, assessed me some $841 and showed me how to get that and more back the following year.
You can do it two ways - keep good records and audit trails or- and they don't like this - just throw everything in a box and give it to them. They don't understand agriculture and don't want anything time-consuming since they have to show results.