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Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot | People skew the stats to their liking all of the time. We incorporated several years ago for several reasons, tax advantages and to separate entirely farm business from some unrelated businesses. My land is 'owned' by another corporation. Which I own, but if a guy is just perusing the parcel map, you'd have no idea who owns what. So you could say that my farm is corporate owned, even though I'm about as small of a farm as you see in this area for a full time operation.
Even the largest farms in the area are owned and operated by families. Where do you draw the line? The smallest row crop farms in the area are still going to have 10+ people working a harvest crew, it just takes that many people to keep a harvest operation rolling smoothly, and you can get a lot more efficient by running multiple crews, so seeing a farm with 20-30 or more people going isn't uncommon. My neighbors are one of the larger row crop farms at this end of the valley, I'd imagine they have 50 people on the payroll at harvest. Still what I'd consider a small family farm, it is owned and operated by two brothers.
On the large end of the spectrum, one of the largest operations I can think of off the top of my head, is Foster Farms. My dad worked for them when he was going to school and knew the owner at the time, he was at the mill everyday. It is still owned by the family. I'm sure they are one of the countries largest poultry farms. Is it not a family farm?
My point is, it is all in how you interpret the definition. What sounds like a good definition in low labor grain farm in the Midwest is not going to be an accurate definition for an irrigated row crop farm in California. | |
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Where are these Commercial farms at?
