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ECENT GROWTH OF RURAL pluriactivity in many developed countries complicates both the concepts ‘family farming’and ‘pluriactivity.’The increasing number of rural farm households that participate in the wage labour market implies that defining ‘the family farm’as a farm where the family derives most of its income from agriculture, excludes a major and growing part of the farm-owning rural families.

This paper suggests that factors other than the extent to which the family derives its income from, or devotes its labour input to agriculture could serve to distinguish family and non-family farms. Family inheritance of farm holdings, often a very significant factor when it comes to farm-based rural settlement, is one such factor. Focussing on family inheritance as a decisive factor in the forming of pluriactive farm households partly responds to Sumner’s (1991, p. 153) challenge to address the question of farm pluriactivity not …