Will family farms continue to dominate agricultural production in the future? Implications for data collection

Agricultural production is dominated by family farms, although other types of farming exist. In some sectors of agriculture (e.g. pigs and poultry, horticulture, wine) the increase in scale leads to a concentration of the production on very large holdings. At the same time we see farmers exploring different strategies like diversification. We also observe a trend of more part-time farming in which resources are shifted to other sectors. This paper analyses these trends for the USA and the EU, with special attention to the Netherlands and Italy concerning multi-functional farming. Theory, trends and recent data suggest that a bi-polar structure is emerging, with more complicated governance structures. US farms are on average smaller in economic terms than European ones. The frequency of multifunctional strategies seems to be more important in the Netherlands and Italy than in the US (with the exception of pluri-activity). However data on structure and farm strategies concerning multifunctional practices is underdeveloped and hard to analyse. We suggest to improve data collection and international standardization.