COMMERCIAL FARMING IN THE UNITED STATES.

This paper is principally a description of the role of commercial farming in the structure of American agriculture. The newly altered classification of commercial farms now enables a better description of the total agricultural picture of the United States, and information available under the new classification should serve as a valuable framework for certain phases of social and economic research. Commercial farms made up 68.9 per cent of all farms in the United States in 1950. Although their numbers were decreasing, they comprised 88.1 per cent of the total acreage devoted to farming and accounted for 97.5 per cent of the value of farm products sold in the United States in 1949. As compared with other farmers, smaller proportions of operators of commercial farms performed off-farm work. Their length of residence on the same farm was longer. Commercial farms had considerably higher proportions of tenancy. The commercial farmer was slightly younger than the operator of other farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]