Noel A.D. Thompson, John Dunkelberger, J. Lavaughn Johnson, and Quita Rosser

In the decade of the 1990s, major structural changes occurred in agriculture, not only in the United States as a whole but in Alabama and the Southeast as well. According to U.S. Census of Agriculture data collected in 1992 and in 1997, significant changes were seen in several key areas, including the number of farms, off-farm employment of farm operators, and income from farm commodity sales.

In an effort to determine how such changes in Alabama agriculture compared with changes regionally and nationally, AAES researchers analyzed census data in terms of number of farms, principal occupations of farm operators, operators’ employment off the farm, tenure arrangements, farm income, and farm business organization.

The census defines the Southeast as Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. It defines a farm as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products were produced and sold, or normally would have been sold, during the census year.

NUMBER OF FARMS
The first distinctive difference between Alabama and the Southeast and the United States was in the number of farms. In Alabama, between 1992 and 1997, the number of farms increased 9.2%, compared to declines of 2.3% and 0.7% in the Southeast and the nation, respectively. In actual numbers, Alabama had 41,384 farms in 1997, an increase of 3,479 farms over 1992. Among Southeastern states, the number of farms per state fell by 1,103, to an average of 38,257, while the United States per-state average dropped to 38,237 farms, down 269 from 1992. Researchers attribute part of Alabama’s increase in farms to the census’ definitional criteria of a farm and part to improved survey techniques used by the National Agricultural Statistics Services (NASS).

FARMING AS PRINCIPAL OCCUPATION
But while Alabama’s actual number of farms increased between 1992 and 1997, the proportion of farm operators who considered farming as their major occupation declined, from 41.5% in 1992 to 37.6% in 1997. The percentage of Alabama farm operators reporting farming as their principal occupation in 1997 was smaller than the region (42%) and the United States (50.3%). This same pattern also was seen in 1992.

FARM OPERATOR NON-FARM EMPLOYMENT
Whether farmers are considered full- or part-time operators depends on the number of days they work off-farm during a calendar year. In this context, a minimum of 200 days worked off-farm is the commonly used criterion for determining a part-time farmer.

In Alabama, the proportion of part-time farmers rose by 2 percentage points between 1992 and 1997, from 43.1% to 45.1%. In the Southeast, meanwhile, off-farm employment jumped 5.7 percentage points from one census year to the next (from 39.4% to 45.1%), and nationally, an increase of 2.5 percentage points was seen, with the percentage of part-time farmers rising from 34.6% in 1992 to 37.1% in 1997.

TENURE ARRANGEMENT
Land ownership, or tenure, is another important structural aspect of agriculture that researchers considered. The Census of Agriculture defines “full owners” as farmers who only operate land they own, “part owners” as farmers who operate land both owned and rented, and “tenants” as farmers who operate only rented land or land worked on shares.

In 1997, full ownership was the dominant type of tenure arrangement in Alabama, the Southeast and the Unitved States. In Alabama, 67% of farm operators owned their land, up 2 percentage points from 1992. Increases of 2 percentage points also were seen in the Southeast (68%) and the United States (60%). Part ownership declined slightly in Alabama in 1997, from 29% in 1992 to 27%, a decline paralleled in the Southeast and nationally. The percentage of tenant farmers in Alabama held steady at 6% between 1992 and 1997. The same was true for the region and the United States.

INCOME FROM SALE OF FARM COMMODITIES
In terms of income from the sale of farm commodities, notable changes were seen between 1992 and 1997 in the three categories of farms: those with income below $10,000, farms between $10,000 and $100,000, and farms above $100,000

Between 1992 and 1997, the share of farms with sales below $10,000 rose by 5.3 percentage points in Alabama, 3 percentage points nationally, and 2.6 percentage points in the Southeast (see table). The proportion of farms with $10,000 to $100,000 in sales fell by 3.7 percentage points in Alabama, 13 percentage points in the United States, and 0.5 percentage points regionally. Farms with sales exceeding $100,000 increased by 1 percentage point in the United States but declined by 1.6 percentage points in Alabama and by 2.1 percentage points in the Southeast. The data indicate that Alabama’s share of small farms is increasing, while its share of middle- and high-income farms is decreasing.

TYPE OF FARM BUSINESS ORGANIZATION
Based on census figures, the business organization of farms—individual or family farms, partnerships, and corporations—changed little between 1992 and 1997 in Alabama, the Southeast, and the nation, with family farms continuing to dominate the major ownership and control of production agriculture. Based on 1997 census results, Alabama had the highest percentage of family farms, at 91%, followed by the United States (86%) and the Southeast (79%). The Southeast, meanwhile, had the highest percentage of farms as corporations (11%), followed by the United States (4%), and Alabama (1%).

CONCLUSIONS
Given the census data analysis and the significant structural changes that did occur in agriculture between 1992 and 1997, AAES researchers have drawn three conclusions about future structural changes in agriculture: one, that, in the aggregate, the number of farms in the United States will probably continue to decline, although there could be slight increases in the number of farms for some selected states; two, that as the number of farms declines, more farm operators will seek employment outside farming; and three, that the family farm will continue to be the major production unit in U.S. agriculture.