About 97 percent of U.S. farms are family-owned, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
USDA 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 through blood, marriage or adoption, according to Hubert Hamer, with USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service.
Hamer, the director of the NASS statistics division, cites five key facts on the topic from the 2012 Census of Agriculture Farm Typology report: 2.1 million of the nation's farms are family-owned; 88 percent of all U.S. farms are "small" family farms, meaning gross cash farm income is less than $350,00o per year; 58 percent of direct farm sales to consumers come from small family farms; 95 percent of vegetables and 66 percent of dairy sales come from the 3 percent of farms that are "large or very large" family farms, with more than $1 million in gross cash farm income; and 18 percent of principal operators of family farms in the U.S. started in the past 10 years.
