Small Farms in the United States: Persistence Under Pressure

Robert A. Hoppe, James MacDonald and Penelope J. Korb

No 58300, Economic Information Bulletin from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: 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 economy because their operators rely heavily on off-farm income. The remaining small farms—small commercial farms—account for most small-farm production. Overall farm production, however, continues to shift to larger operations, while the number of small commercial farms and their share of sales maintain a long-term decline. The shift to larger farms will continue to be gradual, because some small commercial farms are profitable and others are willing to accept losses.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Farm Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2010-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-cfn
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/58300/files/EIB63.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:uersib:58300

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.58300

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economic Information Bulletin from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().