The morphology of multiple household family farms

Abstract

This article endeavours to illuminate a largely underexplored area of family farming research; that of multiple-household arrangements at the farm level. The investigation focused on an agricultural area of south-east Spain where family-based farms specialising in export-oriented horticulture have undergone profound transformations over the last decades. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 20 informants complemented by a face-to-face survey of 135 farmers. A closer look at the farm family interplay unveiled the existence of holdings jointly managed by several kindred households. These farm governance structures are associated with a greater ability to cope with the managerial complexity of this agricultural system and provide a sound basis for farm expansion, thus emerging as an important element of farm differentiation. Micro-level information allowed us to explore, for the first time, the variable morphology of the organisational forms that were often found to lie behind different legal arrangements and their role in the intergenerational transfer process. These findings have far-reaching implications for research, since they take us considerably beyond the picture portrayed by conventional agricultural statistics and challenge many of the traditional assumptions and categories of the existing literature on family farming.