ABSTRACT
Professor C. Nakajima has provided an interesting repertory of the basic theoretic models of the family farm. The theory of the family farm is essentially the theory of what may be called the "household firm". There are two characteristics of this conceptual creature which are crucial for economic theorizing: first that a part of the output goes to the household; and second that a part of the input comes from the household. Therefore, theorizing about the family farm has to be more complex than theorizing about the pure consumer or the pure firm. Recognizing the two theoretically crucial characteristics of the family farm, the ideal measure of the "degree of subsistence" must be the proportion of the output going to the household or the proportion of the input coming from the household or some weighted sum of the two. Therefore, Professor Nakajima starts with a two-coordinate definition of the family farm, the coordinates being the two ratios.
