SMALL FARMS CAN GROW INTO LARGE ENTERPRISES

Smaller farms may have more difficulty in adapting to the changing marketplace because of, among other things, lack of capital and other resources. Yet, as a recent USDA Economic Research Service analysis shows, some smaller farms manage to grow into large commercial operations. Using agricultural census data spanning 1982 to 1997, ERS researchers identified over 5,000 small part-time farm enterprises with limited sales and tracked them over time. By 1997, 644 of these farms had grown into commercial operations with annual sales of $100,000 or more, and 97 of them had over $500,000 in sales. The analysis revealed several characteristics of emergent adaptive farms.