This study considers the issue of the transition of new farmers into U.S. agriculture, by examining land ownership and leasing trends. Our approach is to characterize the entire distribution by farmer age and farmer experience rather than using young versus old and beginning versus established...

Farmland values have increased rapidly over the last decade in response to high incomes for crop farmers and inordinately low interest rates. Farmers have responded to these conditions by bidding up the price of good cropland. In addition, the long period of increasing land values, since the...

This is a new version of a series of color slides on social capital as presented at a conference on rural development presented in Tampa, Florida in 2004, and sponsored by the Southern Rural Development Center.

The industrialization of agriculture is associated with tighter supply chains where vertical coordination between farmers and processors is facilitated by the use of agricultural contracts. An overview is provided on the recent trends in the use and structure of agricultural contracts followed...

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the financial performance measures calculated and reported by Economic Resource Service (ERS) from ARMS data. The evaluation includes the calculation method and the underlying assumptions used in obtaining the reported values. The financial measures...

U.S. decoupled direct payments, paid to farm operators based on historic yields and base acreage under the 2002 Farm Bill, may alter a farmer’s access to credit or his ability to meet debt servicing obligations. Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Resource...

Agribusinesses represent a fundamental link in connecting farmers with retailers and consumers, yet little research has been done to examine the historical financial performance of these food processing firms. Our research examines how publicly-traded agribusinesses perform financially compared...