Re: Organic Farming Economics

Bob Torres (rjt5@cornell.edu)
Tue, 16 Mar 1999 10:28:14 -0500

At 9:39 AM -0500 3/16/1999, Steve Groff wrote:
>Bluestem Associates wrote:
>
>> And let's remember, too, that over three-quarters of US farmers have
>> gross revenues under $50,000 and on average show a net *loss* of $3,000
>> per year.
>>
>
>Bart,
>Is this actually true? How can 75% of US farmers have under $50,000 gross when
>we have all these big farms? Example: A 400 acre corn farmer @ only 100
>bu/acre
>x 2.00 bu. is $80,000 gross. Something doesn't seem right about this info or
>maybe my personal intuiton is on the blink today.
>
>Steve Groff

Hi,
Seems to me that Bart's figure is right. I've been digging through the
census of ag for the last few weeks looking at exactly this data. The
majority of counties have a majority of farmers (somewhere quite close to
that 75% figure) which sell less than $50,000 per year. Although this is
an eye opener, these results might be misleading on their own because of
the way in which the census categories a farm...the minimum income to be
considered a farm is low, (can't remember the exact amt., though I think it
is around $2000 in sales) so this might skew things downward and count lots
of part time farms. But it is still quite telling of the state of ag in
the US.

Bob Torres

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
Bob Torres Ph.D. Student
Department of Rural Sociology Cornell University
133A Warren Hall Ithaca, NY 14853
tel:607-255-9672 fax:607-254-2896

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