Farm

A farm is defined as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the year. Since the definition allows for farms to be included even if they did not have at least $1,000 in sales, but normally would have, a system is developed by USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service for determining when a farm normally would have. These are called point farms. If a place does not have $1,000 in sales, a "point system" assigns dollar values for acres of various crops and head of various livestock species to estimate a normal level of sales. Point farms are farms with fewer than $1,000 in sales but have points worth at least $1,000. Point farms tend to be very small. Some, however, may normally have much larger sales, but experience low sales in a particular year due to bad weather, disease, changes in marketing strategies, or other factors. For farms with production contracts, the value of the commodities produced is used, not the amount of the fees they receive. Changes are made to the point system over time. For example, beginning with the 1997 Census of Agriculture, operations receiving $1,000 or more in Federal government payments were counted as farms, even if they had no sales and otherwise lacked the potential to have $1,000 or more in sales. And, for 2002, a farm that had $500 point value and $500 in government payments was considered a farm. This would not have been true for the 1997 census. The most recent Census of Agriculture is for 2007 (USDA, NASS. 2007 Census of Agriculture, United States, Summary and State Data, Vol. 1, Geographic Area Series, Part 51, February 2009). More than one-quarter of farms have no sales in a typical year, and at least another 30 percent have positive sales of less than $10,000.