hello micha,
>From the
>the current (May 2000) issue of the Harper's Index.
>Percentage change since 1997 in direct government payments to
>U.S. farmers: +200
>Percentage change since then in total farm income, government
>payments included: -1
micha, these numbers alone are no good indicator, of what happens
in reality. a simply (though extreme) example: direct government
payments rose from ONE $ an acre to TWO $. there you have the
increase of +200%. had the usda given both data in absolute
values (paments and income loss in $), they would have been much
more informative. they way they are given here, they are next to
useless. i suspect a certain interest behind not doing so: soone
like me might give these data to officials, who might use them as
an counter-argument in the next WTO negotiations ;-))
>Average amount of revenue per acre generated by a U.S. farm of
>fewer than ten acres: $1,902.50
>Average revenue per acre generated by a farm of more than 2,000
>acres: $21.40
i just came back from a meeting with the aim to concentrate
research and avoid dublicate research in german agricultural
research station. during the coffee break i happened to sit near
a friendly white-haired man, to whom i explained, why i think
administration and the agricultural ministeries in germany are
partly very ineffective (it turned out to be the agricultural
minister of one of the northern states ;-)). he also told me
something of his country, which goes into the same direction: 10%
of the entire farm area makes 60% of the gross income. these 10%
belong to the vegetable, fruit herbs and flower farmers, which
usually have farms of up to 80-100 acres. but here the naked
numbers give a false picture: on these 10% of the whole farm area
50-55% of all the people in agriculture are employed.
unfortunately these 10% are also responsable for roughly 3/4 of
the total pesticide usage.
>The source is given as USDA, with no more detail than that.
to me the data of high-area farms seem to be more realistic than
these for the low-area farms. can you (or someone else) divide
the national farm income by the number of total national acres
and then do a rough separation by the stats of farm sizes ?
usually you can find logical errors by means like these..
according to the newest gov report of agriculture (published
yesterday) our big farms here in germany make about 700$/acre
gross income, while the little family farms make 850$/acre. 21$
would mean 2-3% net income from total sales. extremely low.. and
the difference of 21.4$ and 200-300$ (cut 2/3 from the 700$ above
for taxes, reinvestment, rental costs aso) between the usa and
germany is hard to believe. i expect a difference, as our subsidies
in fact are higher, but not that large.
klaus
+--[ quote of the day, powered by k. wiegand ]-----------+
| The government is extremely fond of amassing great |
| quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth |
| degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results |
| are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. |
| What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in |
| every case, the figures are first put down by a village|
| watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well |
| pleases. |
| - Sir Josiah Stamp |
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