WASHINGTON, D.C. — With 97 percent of all U.S. farms remaining family-owned, they’re still the backbone of the agriculture industry, according to the latest data from the 2012 Census of Agriculture Farm Typology Report.
"As we wrap up mining the 6 million data points from the latest Census of Agriculture, we used typology to further explore the demographics of who is farming and ranching today," said Hubert Hamer, USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) division director.
"What we found is that family-owned businesses, while very diverse, are at the core of the U.S. agriculture industry," he said.
According to the USDA, the 2012 Census of Agriculture Farm Typology report is a special data series that primarily focuses on the "family farm."
By definition, a family farm is any farm where the majority of the business is owned by the operator and individuals related to the operator, including through blood, marriage, or adoption, the report said.
"It’s due in part to information such as this from the Census of Agriculture that we can help show the uniqueness and importance of U.S. agriculture to rural communities, families, and the world," Hamer said.
"Whether small or large – on the East Coast, West Coast, or the Midwest – family farms produce food and fiber for people all across the U.S. and the world," he added.
The key highlights of the report include the following five facts about family farms in the United States:
•Food equals family – 97 percent of the 2.1 million farms in the United States are family-owned operations.
•Small business matters – 88 percent of all U.S. farms are small family farms.
•Local connections come in small packages – 58 percent of all direct farm sales to consumers come from small family farms.
•Big business matters, too – 64 percent of all vegetable sales and 66 percent of all dairy sales come from the 3 percent of farms that are large or very large family farms.
•Farming provides new beginnings – 18 percent of principal operators on family farms in the U.S. started within the last 10 years.
The 2012 Census of Agriculture Farm Typology report also classified all farms into unique categories based on three criteria: who owns the operation; whether farming is the principal operator’s primary occupation; and gross cash farm cash income (GCFI).
In addition, small family farms have GCFI less than $350,000; mid-size family farms have GCFI from $350,000 to $999,999; and large family farms have GCFI of $1 million or more. Small farms are further divided based on whether the principal operator works primarily on or off the farm.
Virginia Harris, NASS demographer, said while small family farms represent an overwhelming portion of all farms in the country, "not surprisingly, they cover a significantly smaller portion of U.S. farmland."
"In 2012, small farms operated just under half (or 48 percent) of all farmland and owned 47 percent of the value of farm real estate, which includes land and buildings," she said.
"They accounted for 20 percent of agriculture sales and 5 percent of the country’s net farm income in 2012," she added. "They held 40 percent of the U.S. cattle inventory and 89 percent of the horse inventory and grew 64 percent of all acres in forage production."
According to demographics, Harris said the youngest farmers among all groups were operators whose primary occupation is off the farm, with an average age of 52.8 years.
"Retirement farms and low-sales farms had higher proportions of female principal operators (17 and 18 percent, respectively) than did all U.S. farms (14 percent)," she said.
"This small sampling of the millions of data points starts to show how diverse and important family farms are to the economy and rural America," she added.
The following are family-owned farms in the Farm World readership area, according to the report:
