The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) reports that family-owned farms remain the backbone of the agriculture industry.
NASS’s 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, according to a USDA news release.
Key highlights from the report include the following five facts about U.S. family farms:
1. Food equals family—97 percent of the 2.1 million farms in the United States are family-owned operations.
2. Small business matters—88 percent of all U.S. farms are small family farms.
3. Local connections come in small packages—58 percent of all direct farm sales to consumers come from small family farms.
4. 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.
5. Farming provides new beginnings—18 percent of principal operators on family farms in the U.S. started within the last 10 years.
Click here to read more on the Census of Agriculture report.