A form of farm ownership which is a separate legal entity from the owners of the farm. Changes in the tax law in the 1970s encouraged the incorporation of farms as corporate tax rates declined while individual tax rates rose, mainly because of inflation. The 1992 Census of Agriculture reports that less than 4%, or nearly 73,000, of the 1.925 million farms in the nation were corporate farms. By contrast, more than 1.653 million (86%) were individual or family-owned operations and 186,000 (10%) were partnerships.