The USDA’s
Economic Research Service (ERS) has developed a farm typology, or farm classification, that divides the 2.1 million U.S. farms into 8 mutually exclusive and relatively homogeneous groups:
#limited resource farms
#retirement farms
#residential/lifestyle farms
#farming occupation/lower sales
#farming occupation/high sales
#large family farms
#very large family farms
#nonfamily farms.
Also, the eight categories can be collapsed into 3:
#rural residence farms
#intermediate farms
#commercial farms
Data for 2003 indicate that Commercial farms, those having sales of $250,000 or more annually, constitute 9% of all farms and account for 72% of production. Intermediate farms, constituting 24% of all farms, account for 19% of production. The largest number of farms, characterized as rural residence farms, constitute 68% of all farms and account for 8% of production.
See also
*
Small farm
Small may refer to:
Science and technology
* SMALL, an ALGOL-like programming language
* Small (anatomy), the lumbar region of the back
* ''Small'' (journal), a nano-science publication
* <small>, an HTML element that defines smaller text ...
References
{{CRS, article = Report for Congress: Agriculture: A Glossary of Terms, Programs, and Laws, 2005 Edition, url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110810044532/http://ncseonline.org/nle/crsreports/05jun/97-905.pdf, author= Jasper Womach
External links
Updating the ERS Farm TypologyU.S. Department of Agriculture
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of comme ...
,
Economic Research Service
United States Department of Agriculture