America’s Diverse Family Farms, 2007 Edition
by
Robert Hoppe, David E. Banker, Penni Korb,
Erik O'Donoghue, and
James MacDonaldEconomic Information Bulletin No. (EIB-26) 12 pp, June 2007
American farms encompass a wide range of sizes, ownership structures, and business types, but most farms are still family farms. Family farms account for 98 percent of farms and 85 percent of production. Although most farms are small and own most of the farmland, production has shifted to very large farms. Farms with sales of $1 million or more make up less than 2 percent of all farms, but they account for 48 percent of farm product sales. Most of these million-dollar farms are family farms. Because small-farm households rely on off-farm work for most of their income, general economic policies, such as tax or economic development policy, can be as important to them as traditional farm policy.
Keywords: Family farms, farm program payments, farm production, farm household income, commodity payments, direct payments, government payments, Agricultural Resource Management Survey, contracting
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For more detail,
see Structure and Finances of U.S. Farms: Family Farm Report, 2007 Edition (EIB-24).