This paper examines farms in areas undergoing development, using a longitudinal file constructed by linking several agricultural censuses. Individual farms are followed over the 1982-97 period. Survival, exit, and entrance rates are presented for three types of farms: recreational, adaptive, and...

We use two comprehensive and representative USDA databases to assess the performance of small farms in the U.S. Farm production is shifting to much larger farms, and the number of small commercial farms is declining. Most large U.S. farms remain family-owned and operated enterprises, and most...

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...

U.S. farms are diverse, ranging from small retirement and residential farms to enterprises with annual sales in the millions. Nevertheless, most U.S. farms—98 percent in 2004—are family farms. Even the largest farms tend to be family farms. Large-scale family farms and nonfamily farms...

Million-dollar farms—those with annual sales of at least $1 million—accounted for about half of U.S. farm sales in 2002, up from a fourth in 1982 (with sales measured in constant 2002 dollars). By 2006, million-dollar farms, accounting for 2 percent of all U.S. farms, dominated U.S....

Ninety-one percent of U.S. farms are classified as small—gross cash farm income (GCFI) of less than $250,000. About 60 percent of these small farms are very small, generating GCFI of less than $10,000. These very small noncommercial farms, in some respects, exist independently of the farm...

National average statistics related to farm production mask the diversity in the Nation's 2 million farms and the people who operate them. Farms in the United States differ not only by size (sales and acres) and type of production, but also by organizational characteristics (land ownership,...

The studies in this report analyze the effects of decoupled payments in the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act on recipient households, and assess land, labor, risk management, and capital market conditions that can lead to links between decoupled payments and production...

The rate at which U.S. farms go out of business, or exit farming, is about 9 or 10 percent per year, comparable to exit rates for nonfarm small businesses in the United States. U.S. farms have not disappeared because the rate of entry into farming is nearly as high as the exit rate. The...