This study empirically examines the effects of farm organization (separation of ownership and control) on farmer effort and farm success using a structural equation model and data from the 2005-2010 Agriculture Management Resource Survey. Contrary to expectations of existing theory, the results show that larger separated ownership and control farms have a higher probability of farm success, and their operators supply more labor effort than combined ownership and control farms. The results seem consistent even with greater exogenous uncertainty, or more asymmetric information. The implications are that current theoretical literature on farm organization and evolution was not validated using this method and data set and may need to be modified.