Farmers and farm managers are the largest single group of owners in the nine Northeast States; they own 26 percent of all private noncorporate holdings and over 40 percent of land in farms , according to a 1978 ESCS survey of privately owned farm and ranch land, other rural land, and urban land. Sole proprietors and husbands and wives own 80 percent of sill farmland, 1 percent of all ownership units own half of all privately held land, and about 60 percent of the land is held by people over 50 years old. Report also classes landownership by race, sex, method and date of acquisition, residence, and education.