Exploring Alternative Farm Definitions: Implications for Agricultural Statistics and Program Eligibility

Erik J. O'Donoghue, Robert A. Hoppe, David E. Banker and Penni Korb

No 291954, Economic Information Bulletin from United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service

Abstract: Meeting agricultural policy and statistical goals requires a defi nition of U.S. agriculture’s basic unit, the farm. However, these goals can be at odds with one another. USDA defi nes “farm” very broadly to comprehensively measure agricultural activity. Consequently, most establishments classifi ed as farms in the United States produce very little, while most production occurs on a small number of much larger operations. While desirable for obtaining comprehensive national coverage, measurement and analysis based on the current defi nition can provide misleading characterizations of farms and farm structure in the United States. Additionally, more stringent requirements have been proposed for farms to qualify for Federal agricultural program benefi ts. This analysis outlines the structure of U.S. farms, discusses the current farm defi nition, evaluates several potential criteria that have been proposed to defi ne target farms more precisely, and examines how these criteria affect both statistical coverage and program eligibility.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Research Methods/Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41
Date: 2009-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/291954/files/9671_eib49.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:291954

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.291954

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 ().