Saturday, November 10, 2018

When Are Farmers No Longer Farmers

From a Congressional Research Service report on 2018 Farm Income Outlook comes  a table which I can't incorporate.

You can access it here.  What struck me first, from the CRS report, was the rapid increase in farm household income from off farm sources, to the point that off-farm accounted for easily 3 or 4 times as much income as farm sources.

Then, as I tried to find a way to get the image into this post, and failed, I found this ERS spreadsheet.  We all remember the difference between "mean" and "median", right.  According to the table the median farmer had no income from farming in the years 2013-2018. 

That's weird, but this helps to explain it (from a Rural Development Perspectives article)
Almost 90 percent of elderly operators' average household income came from off-farm sources, with nearly half of their off-farm income coming from "other off-farm income," which includes Social Security. Another 19 percent of their off-farm income came from interest and dividends, reflecting savings and investments by these households during earlier years. Unlike elderly operators, operators under age 65 received most of their off-farm income from wages, salaries, or self-employment.
 That was my mother after my father died--for a number of years she continued the poultry operation, but SS income was really the basis of her livelihood.  But we don't think of these situations when discussing "farmers".

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