Overview
This briefing room focuses on indicators of the economic
well-being of the households of the principal operators
of family farms. In addition to income and wealth, the
briefing room describes indicators of poverty status,
an income-wealth indicator, health insurance coverage,
household living expenses, and workplace fatalities.
The well-being of farm
operator households is not equivalent to the financial
performance of the farm sector or of farm businesses because
there are other stakeholders in farming, such as landlords
and contractors, besides farm operator households. In
addition, farm operator households have nonfarm investments,
jobs, businesses, and other links to the nonfarm economy
that are separate from their farming interests.
How do we define our target population—households
of principal operators of family farms? First of all,
we rely on USDA’s definition of a farm. The large
majority are small farms by any standard. Second, a family
farm is defined as one in which the majority of the
ownership of the farm business is held by related individuals.
Nearly all farms (97 percent in 2006) are family farms.
Third, we identify the principal operator population and
his or her household. Most farms have only one operator.
For multiple-operator farms, a principal operator is identified
as the individual making most of the day-to-day decisions
about the operation. About 40 percent of farms have more
than one operator, but three-quarters of these are operated
by a husband-wife team. Therefore, both operators are
part of the principal
operator household on which we focus.
The briefing room includes statistics based on classifications
of farm operator households that highlight the diversity
of the farm sector. The ERS website gives access to indicators
of well-being by several classification schemes through
the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS)
webtool. This tool allows a user to tailor a request through
data queries to produce statistical tables.
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