The 2012 United States Census of Agriculture defines a family farm as "any farm where the majority of the business is owned by the operator and individuals related to the operator, including relatives who do not live in the operator’s household" it defines a farm as "any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during a given year." The disparity of definitions reflects national and geographical differences in cultures, rural land tenure, and rural economies, as well as the different purposes for which definitions are coined. 3.3 Local food and the organic movementĪn "informal discussion of the concepts and definitions" in a working paper published by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2014 reviewed English, Spanish and French definitions of the concept of "family farm".ĭefinitions referred to one or more of labor, management, size, provision of family livelihood, residence, family ties and generational aspects, community and social networks, subsistence orientation, patrimony, land ownership and family investment.At least 500 million of the world's 570 million farms are managed by families, making family farms predominant in global agriculture. In contrast, in Brazilian agriculture, the official definition of a family farm ( agricultura familiar) is limited to small farms worked primarily by members of a single family but again, this fact does not imply that corporate farming is a small presence in Brazilian agriculture rather, it simply reflects the fact that large farms with many workers cannot be legally classified under the family farm label because that label is legally reserved for smallholdings in that country.įarms that would not be considered family farms would be those operated as collectives, non-family corporations, or in other institutionalised forms. agriculture rather, it simply reflects the fact that many corporations are closely held. However, that does not at all imply that corporate farming is a small presence in U.S.
A 2014 USDA report shows that family farms operate 90 percent of the nation’s farmland, and account for 85 percent of the country’s agricultural production value. agriculture, a family farm can be of any size, as long as the ownership is held within a family. Thus, the idea of a family farm as a unitary concept or definition does not easily translate across languages, cultures, or centuries, as there are substantial differences in agricultural traditions and histories between countries and between centuries within a country. In various countries, most farm families have structured their farm businesses as corporations (such as limited liability companies) or trusts, for liability, tax, and business purposes. Family farm businesses can take many forms, from smallholder farms to larger farms operated under intensive farming practices. Ī family farm is generally understood to be a farm owned and/or operated by a family it is sometimes considered to be an estate passed down by inheritance.Īlthough a recurring conceptual and archetypal distinction is that of a family farm as a smallholding versus corporate farming as large-scale agribusiness, that notion does not accurately describe the realities of farm ownership in many countries. The Scharmoos estate in Schwarzenberg in the Swiss canton of Lucerne, owned by the Schofer family during c.
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