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.
Now if you are talking about wheat, corn and soybeans then you are mostly right. Unless they are growing for a seed company most small farms don't bother. They raise things that have a higher return.
But there are still small and medium sized farms that are family owned. Although in some cases they are like one family I know that owns a very successful small business that they started to bring in a little extra cash for the farm. The business has far outstripped the farm in income but they still own the farm and one of the daughters and her husband took it over.