Most Wisconsin farms listed as 'family-owned' operations

About 97 percent of the nation's 2.1 million farms are considered "family-owned operations," according to a report issued Tuesday by the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

Wisconsin is right in line with the national average with between 96.6 percent and 97.5 percent of the state's farms listed as "family-owned operations," according to a graphic included in the report.

"While farms have changed in the way they look, and in some cases their structure, the family component has remained the same," said Casey Langan, spokesman with the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation in Madison. "In many cases, our farms are mutli-generational or they are teams of siblings, or cousins, who have found it works better to work together under the umbrella of one farm rather than trying to make it on separate farms."

West Virginia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Alabama reported the highest number of family farms, with about 98 percent family ownership. Nevada, Rhode Island, California, and Alaska reported the fewest, with totals in the low 90-percentile, according to the numbers collected as part of the 2012 Census of Agriculture.

"What we found is that family-owned businesses, while very diverse, are at the core of the U.S. agriculture industry," NASS statistics division director Hubert Hamer said in a news release. "In fact, 97 percent of all U.S. farms are family-owned."

Classifications were made based on who owns the operation, whether farming is the principal operator's primary occupation, and gross cash farm cash income, according to USDA.

Only 3 percent of U.S. farms were not family owned, but they accounted for 16 percent of the value of all U.S. agricultural products sold, the report stated.

Wisconsin had about 69,754 farms in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That was down from 78,463 in the 2007 Census of Agriculture.

About 94 percent of farm acreage in Wisconsin is tied to family-owned operations, a little higher than the national average of 88 percent.

Langan said the average American is several generations removed from the farm and may not personally know a farmer. About 1 percent of the population is tied directly to a farm.

"Wisconsin agriculture recognizes the need, in many cases, to reintroduce itself to its customers," he said. "We're in a situation where the general public ... doesn't know much about what happens on farms."

— nphelps@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @nathanphelpsPG or Instagram at Nathan_Phelps_PG

On the Net

• U.S. Census of Agriculture: agcensus.usda.gov