No it is not. I know several farmers who own and farm their family farms. Of course they probably will not be able to pass it on to the next generation. The inheritance taxes will force the sale of the farm and equipment.
OK, I stand corrected by gross sales. It looks pretty stable, but subsistence level for a very long time:
http://www.ers.usda.gov/dataFiles/Farm_Household_Income/table04.xls
About 75% have gross sales below $50K a year. It’s curious that they’d break out the income and not the gross acreage. Only 2% of “farms” generate more than $1 million in gross sales annually.
So that’s really quite misleading. I suspect the Ag Dept. benefits from the veneer of “family farming”.
All the farmers I know, that I consider “family farms” are pretty small and very poor. Given that the number has been flat since 1996, farming, family farming, is just getting worse and worse as an occupation.