The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and, where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or a part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and, where applicable, sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or a part of an individual's income is derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.) Persons with disabilities who require alternative means for communication of program information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.

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Mary Clare Ahearn, Penni Korb, and Jet Yee 2. Panel data for farms have been available in Canada and Israel for some time and determinants of turnover have been compared for those two countries (Kimhi and Bollman 1999). We would expect the results for Canada to most closely resemble the results for the United States. They found that a major factor explaining exits in Canada was farm size; the larger the farm the less likely to exit. Other determinants of exit were off-farm work (negatively related) and age of the operator.

Meeting agricultural policy and statistical goals requires a defi nition of U.S. agriculture's basic unit, the farm. However, these goals can be at odds with one another. USDA defi nes "farm" very broadly to comprehensively measure agricultural activity. Consequently, most establishments classifi ed as farms in the United States produce very little, while most production occurs on a small number of much larger operations. While desirable for obtaining comprehensive national coverage, measurement and analysis based on the current defi nition can provide misleading characterizations of farms and farm structure in the United States. Additionally, more stringent requirements have been proposed for farms to qualify for Federal agricultural program benefi ts. This analysis outlines the structure of U.S. farms, discusses the current farm defi nition, evaluates several potential criteria that have been proposed to defi ne target farms more precisely, and examines how these criteria affect both statistical coverage and program eligibility.

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