Make-up of Family Farms

Dan General

make
Cathy Isom has the findings from the Ag Departments latest study on the make-up of family farms in the U-S. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.

Download Make-up of Family Farms

The business of farming remains mostly a family business.  According to a recent USDA study on family farms and their diversity.

“Well 99 percent of U-S farms are family farms and they account for about 89-percent of farm production that’s of 2015.”

Agriculture Department Economist Bob Hoppy says in addition U-S agriculture is primarily made up of small family farms.

“That means they have gross revenues of less than 350-thousand-dollars and they make up 90-percent of the farm count and they operate about half the farmland.  But they only account for 24-percent of farm production in total.”

As the largest share of farm production come from..

“large scale family farms that are defined as farms with revenues of one million or more.  They account for about 42-percent of production.” 

And farm households in general are neither low income nor low wealth.  As both categories are above the median for all U-S households with income in most cases.

I’m Cathy Isom…