Introduction - Agriculture Forestry and Fishing Research at NIOSH - page 7

Agriculture Sector
The agriculture sector, which the 1990 enabling legislation targeted, is com-
posed of about 2.1 million farms (Hoppe and Banker, 2006). Its structure is bifur-
cated: large capital-intensive operations rely on scale to survive economically, and
smaller operations rely on niche production of high-value commodities (Midwest
Center for Agricultural Research, Education, and Disease & Injury Prevention,
2002). The former constitute about 7 percent of all farms in the United States; these
farms typically each have agricultural product sales of $1 million or more per year
and generate 75 percent of farm cash receipts from the sale of agricultural com-
modities (USDA, 2004; Hoppe and Banker, 2006). They operate enterprises on 44
percent of all U.S. harvested cropland and account for a large majority of farm cash
receipts in every category of agricultural commodity except tobacco and specialty
livestock, such as sheep, goats, and horses (USDA, 2004). In 1987, a ranking of
farms by value of commodities marketed demonstrated that the largest 13 percent
accounted for 75 percent of total sales (USDA, 1987). Thus, from 1987 to 2002, the
size concentration in the U.S. agricultural sector doubled (USDA, 1987, 2004).
At the other extreme are agricultural enterprises that operate on 56 percent
of U.S. cropland and generate 25 percent of total farm cash receipts (USDA, 2004;
Hoppe and Banker, 2006). Some are limited-resource farms, which report gross
product sales of less than $100,000 in 2003 dollar equivalents and low (below
the poverty level) operator household income; others are retirement farms (run
by retirees who are also farm operators), residential or lifestyle farms (smaller
enterprises whose operators report a major occupation other than farming), or
conventional farming-occupation farms (such as family farms whose operators
report farming as their major occupation) (Hoppe and Banker, 2006). The com-
mittee recognizes that congressional testimony surrounding NIOSH's 1990 agricul-
tural health and safety mandate used findings from midwestern and northeastern
(largely New York) family operations, and public and congressional debate relative
to the role of family farm operations in the agriculture sector has been spirited.
However, the committee believes that in the context of NIOSH's agricultural health
and safety initiatives the most useful definition of a “family farm” is the one used
by Congress in the 1985 Food Security Act: any farm that is organized as a sole pro-
prietorship, partnership, or family corporation and uses less than 1.5 person-years
of hired labor per year (U.S. Congress, 1985). This definition has the advantage of
including the notion that family owners are responsible for providing the major
share of labor required to operate the farm—an important dimension in allocat-
ing federal resources to surveillance and intervention among different agricultural
settings in the sector.