| Sumario: | The writers update and extend the measurement of U.S. agristructure offered by Wimberley (1987). Exploratory factor analysis for the years 1982, 1987, and 1992 yielded three dimensions of agristructure: corporate-commercial, farming-firm, and small-farm. Factor-scores used to estimate scales were found to have high reliabilities, and strong inter-temporal correlations were evident for each sale across years. In addition, the content of each scale was consistent across the three years, which suggests that the structural shifts in the elements defining agristructure were minimal. Analysis of the patterns describing heterogeneity among counties in each year produced five homogeneous groups of counties. Three were dominated by small-farms, farming-firms, and corporate farms, respectively; and the other two were mixed groups, which were interpreted as reflecting transitional situations. The implications of these findings are considered.
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