Florida's crops and livestock are produced by 35,100 farms and ranches 

 plus a large network of support industries such as transportation, marketing, 

 processing, and supply. Farms and ranches range from traditional small family 

 or individually-owned operations to a few large-scale multimillion dollar cor- 

 porate farms. According to the 1978 Census of Agriculture, individual or 

 family farms made up 83% of total farms as opposed to 6.3% for corporate 

 farms. This pattern has remained relatively stable over the last decade. 

 Wilcox et al . (1974) concluded that large corporate farms are not displacing 

 the private individual or family farms. They contend that many of the corpor- 

 ate farms are owned and operated by families and individuals and still exhibit 

 the characteristics of family farms. 



The "real" cash value of Florida's agriculture refers to trends which 

 have been adjusted for overall inflation in the economy. Production has ex- 

 panded (Table 6), real prices have fallen, and the real value of production 

 has increased. Although the increase in farm prices did not keep pace with 



Table 4. United States and Florida agricultural exports in millions of cur- 

 rent dollars for fiscal years 1975 and 1979 (Greene et al . 1980). 



Figures for 1978. 



104 



